Fashion round the world

Starting from my first international trip (to Japan in 2003), I became aware of how fashion differs country to country. TN made a spot on comment about our “bland, Canadian clothes” compared to Japanese girls. Being in the country awhile, you become used to what everyone around you is wearing, and your own tastes start to shift a bit due to your surroundings. By the end of our 3 weeks in Japan, I wanted to buy leg warmers, but didn’t, thankfully; returning home, I realized I wouldn’t have anywhere to wear them and would stick out like a sore thumb.

This happens to me on every trip. In Bangladesh, surrounded by a sea of pastel colours that look great against dark skin, I narrowly missed buying a salwaar kameez in a horrible “nurse scrubs” colour. Brought back super frilly clothing I bought and wore in Hong Kong, that at home I couldn’t get the guts to wear because I’d look like Sailor Moon. Sometimes my fashion taste changes and sticks with me, like loving the super short shorts I saw in Singapore on all the girls. I can’t think of a more flattering trend to adopt as an Asian girl with long-ish legs with not much boobage.

In Sweden I just couldn’t get on board with a lot of their fashion. Scarves are ubiquitous, on women AND  men, and in my opinion they look… Horrible. Not flattering at all. Emo and ridiculous.

Googling for images to show you what I mean, apparently I’m not “hip” because I guess it’s not unique to just Sweden, but also American celebrities, the UK, and elsewhere in Europe. However, I stand by avoiding fashion trends that do nothing to flatter the figure.

This is what the scarves look like:

The classic “emo” look that a lot of young Swedish people have:

I don’t understand how this is supposed to look good… On girls, it covers up your chest. On men, it’s not exactly masculine. It’s not particularly practical either as the fabric is thin and worn indoors (and I would guess worn in summer too).

I associate these neck scarves, or bandanas with pets! Seriously! I used to do this to my cat.

On pets, cute… On people, not so much.

The paradox of choice: Why I hate grocery shopping

Just returned from grocery shopping and am completely drained. I absolutely hate grocery shopping in Canada. I see how and why, that the more choices we have, the more unhappy and dissatisfied we are. (To learn more about this, watch Barry Schwartz’s talk on the paradox of choice.)

I am convinced that the big grocery stores here are designed to keep us as long as possible in their stores, which is why I dread going there and put it off as long as possible (except for my weekly stops into the local Safeway to pick up fresh produce and milk, which is shopping on a smaller scale). So my fridge is almost empty and am then forced to go grocery shopping. I try to eat something before shopping, but of course I always end up ravenous while shopping in the cavernous stores. Then I get grumpy and on edge, and the stress of shopping there makes me want to give up on healthy eating and gorge on whatever junk food catches my eye at the last minute.

Today, I made my way to Superstore only to find out they’re closed for renovations, so then had to drive to the nearby almost as gigantic Save-on-foods (which takes driving twice the actual physical distance, due to the direction of the roads to handle high volume traffic). After my sister’s comment that there are prices per 100g on all products for comparison shopping, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for them and confirmed that this is not true of every grocery store. Now, I go into the store with a list of things I want to buy, and don’t wander willy-nilly, but still I end up with several unplanned purchases, such as several bags of my favorite fair trade coffee because it’s 30% off. And walking through the huge store, I start to get hungry, and decide on impulse to pick up some bread and cheese. For something as simple as cheese, the cheese is divided into 2 groups (what I assume are supposed to be “everyday value” cheeses near the milk, and “premium” cheeses in the deli) and these are at opposite ends to each other in the store. Even within each grouping, it takes me some mental gymnastics to determine the best value brand cheese taking into consideration what’s on sale, and then by the time I get to the other end of the store, I can’t remember if the one I picked up was better priced or not. Then for bread, I spend a good 5 minutes trying to pick out a loaf of bread out of the over 20 varieties available, based on nutrition, price and freshness.

After finally making it to the cashier, I glance at a sign that advertises that tomorrow being the first Tuesday of the month, all purchases are 15% off! I don’t have the energy to put back half my stuff and come back again tomorrow. Ugh. After all that mental energy expended on the dozens of decisions made in the last hour, I end up regretting that on the whole, I fared pretty poorly this evening.

If there’s one upside, it’s that I discovered that Save-on-Foods carries really good artisan breads, though a bit pricey. My dinner of pate and jalapeno havarti cheese was fantastic on the type of dense bread you might find in Europe, with lots of seeds, 5g of protein and 2g of fibre per slice of bread. I’ll have to save my rant against the general crappiness of Canadian breads for another day.