I’m posting my G-day entry one day late (please bear with me, paid work comes first lol) for my Pandemic Journal for the Blogging from #AtoZChallenge. The day following the lockdown in Wuhan was the eve of the Spring Festival (January 24), the start of the week-long holiday that never was. Anyway, my stocks were running dry so I went to Carrefour for my monthly grocery run.
I looked at my photos on that day before writing this entry and thought, “Gosh, it’s been three months and I still remember that smoggy mid-winter morning!”
The Shuangjing branch of Carrefour is roughly 1.5 kilometers away from where I live so it’s a walking distance in Beijing terms. But that morning was freezing. Yes, because my glove-less hands were dragging my wheeled grocery basket; I needed to buy supplies because I had a hunch that there would be panic-buying as a knee-jerk reaction to the lockdown in Wuhan, some thousands of kilometers away from Beijing.
Surprise! Nothing unusual happening at the grocery!
Maybe because Beijing had not felt the gravity of the lockdown yet. Because it was never imposed on Beijing.
Anyway, since January 24, I have done grocery runs at least eight times in three months. That’s the surprising thing because the usual one-month supply that I gather every run only lasted for 10 days during the self-isolation period.
The closure of many restaurants and establishments in the capital meant that I had to be self-sufficient and cook on my own. Not bad, because I can, but I usually don’t, unless I need to release stress by… chopping vegetables and boiling noodles.
It’s a pity that I have not taken any single photo of the items that I usually buy, but there always has to be a can of ice cream to satisfy my sugar craving. Even in winter.
If there is a notable situation in my eight grocery runs, it is not panic buying (because there never was, at least in Carrefour in Shuangjing), nor a shortage of toilet paper (because its section has towers upon towers of toilet paper stacks), but the steep increase in prices. Especially vegetables. I remember feeling nauseated when I saw my favorite soft-baked chocolate Oreos (and my inflation marker) costing almost RMB 12 (USD 1.70 / PHP 85.91) for a pack, when I last went to Carrefour on April 4th. Just in January, it was around RMB 9 (USD 1.27 / PHP 64.43). Almost everything–vegetables, fruits, meat, bread–every edible item cost more in a span of eight weeks.
It’s no surprise, considering the disruption in supply chains. But what wowed me is that this grocery branch did not run out of supplies.
With this information in mind (with the exception of the Oreo reference, of course), I told my parents back home that they need to restock supplies that will last for at least two weeks, and that they need to do it sparingly so as not to contribute to panic buying. That is quite tricky, considering restocking is quite hard in the local groceries in my hometown, and that my family cannot go out of our city because of the travel restrictions being imposed by other local governments.
If there’s a lesson that I learned from my grocery runs, I think that would be budgeting my weekly food decisively. For example, I had to buy fresh produce and prepare them for different recipes. I failed to control my cravings because I have to buy Oreos and ice cream cans every single time I buy food. Bad. But it’s fine – those foodstuffs helped me maintain my sanity, at a cost of growing love handles!
Photos: Andy Penafuerte III