Luxury Cars

As I was reading an article about the rise of the middle class, it featured an apartment complex for the upwardly mobile here in S Asia whose parking lot is filled with luxury cars like Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas.

And they ARE luxury cars here. We never thought we would look at a Civic and be in awe of its size and luxury.

And yes, I know I need to post pictures of the little car we bought. Uploading pictures from our Mac onto blogspot still intimidates me.

"Dollar" stores have infiltrated S Asia

There is a store here called Always 99Rs. This is a take on the American dollar or 99 Cents store. The decor is red, white and blue and the are slogan is, "The original American bargain store."

Here's the thing, though - 99Rs. translates into $2.50 and nothing in there is a great deal like you would get in a dollar store in the US - especially Super One Dollar Plus in Houston. In addition, most of the stock is more than 99Rs. and they have started becoming a place that imports stuff from the US and charges A LOT - way more than 99Rs.

However, one way this place is like the dollar stores back home is the one-off brands like Sporty Cow cheese instead of Laughing Cow. Lizol, instead of Lysol. Lizol is a few bucks, whereas a can of Lysol is $8. I know!

Here is a sample of other things that are available at "The original American bargain store" and how much they cost converted into US dollars:

Box of Mac N Cheese: $2.50
Can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle or Tomato Soup: $2.50
Jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce: $4.75
Bottle of Mrs. Butterworth's pancake syrup: $6.12
12 oz. box of Crispix cereal: $6.75
24 oz. bottle of Pert Plus shampoo: $10
24 oz. bottle of Pantene ProV shampoo: $17.50
(and yes, I double-checked for typos - those numbers are correct)

So, although we get excited by seeing these products, the sticker shock causes us to walk on by...

Gone are the days where we would stock up on Kroger peanut butter when it would go on sale for $1 a jar. Here, the same size jar of decent peanut butter would cost us upwards of $6.

So, to our favorite Kroger on Buffalo Speedway - We'll be back in December, ready to buy cheap peanut butter and rent $1 DVDs!