culture shock

Yesterday I was in an Asian market with my boyfriend, who hardly ever goes into Asian markets and doesn’t really know too much about them or Asian culture. We were looking for some various sauces for a dish he wanted me to make and he said, “Oh, I guess they don’t have soy sauce here.” I said to him, “Oh, no, it’s probably in a separate aisle and has it’s own dedicated section of soy sauces.” Sure enough on the next aisle over was a very large soy sauce section. He looked at it baffled and said, “Damn, you weren’t kidding.”

We decided to not get the stuff to make the dish since it was already late and we were getting tired, so we went out to eat instead. But as we were putting the items we got back onto their shelves and such, we passed by a worker stocking eggs. There was a sign that said “Balut – 99 cents each.” My boyfriend asked the worker, “Are these 99 cents for the whole crate?” (it was a maybe a crate of 2 dozen eggs). The worker said, “No, no, each.”

My boyfriend looked at me puzzled and said, “Why are those eggs 99 cents each?”

I replied with a disgusted look on my face, “Because they’re balut. I bet you have no idea what that is.”

“No, but I do know I wouldn’t pay 99 cents for one egg.”

“I wouldn’t pay anything to eat balut! It’s basically an egg, with a duck fetus in it.”

He look at me with a puzzled expression on his face and said, “Your people have weird customs.”

I laughed.