Finding a Thermos at a Hong Kong Ben Franklin

     This afternoon I decided it was time to go find another lunch thermos.  We have one from home that Terry's been using to carry a "planover" entree from our fridge to slip into his backpack to take to work. Now I need one for those days when I'll be at school over lunchtime.  

     I've discovered a lot of little shops in the neighborhood that are similar to what used to be called variety stores on the main streets of small-town Minnesota a few decades ago.  Anyone remember the Ben Franklin stores?  (There still is one in Grand Marais, though it's evolved into something uniquely touristy.)  Here in Kennedy Town you take two steps down off the sidewalk into a tiny shop with 2 narrow aisles that are absolutely stuffed with all kinds of useful household items--everything you need for laundry, cleaning, cooking and eating, plus linens, stationery things, batteries, toiletries, you name it, all with a Chinese twist.  It's a bit of an adventure going into one of these shops looking for something specific, wondering just where it might be in all the clutter.  Doing errands at wide-aisled, well-planned Target is going to seem so ho-hum in a few months.  (Could very likely be a welcome ho-hum, though...enduring an adventure to get a new toothbrush, for example, will soon enough not seem so charming.) 

     I decided to go look for my lunch thermos where I bought a small stainless steel teapot last week at a shop on Des Voeux Road, the one furthest away from our apartment so I could get in a good walk today.  I found one that was satisfactory, made of stainless steel with a wide mouth, big enough to hold a serving of soup.  It was about half the cost of the real Thermos we brought from home but probably not half as good.  I'm sort of expecting that the seal will leak, and it doesn't look as if it's going to keep anything hot for very long, although in another month a hot lunch isn't going to sound so appealing in Hong Kong anyway.

     Making this purchase reminded me of a discussion I had last year with two friends in Shenzhen, one from India and the other from Pakistan.  Both had lived with their husbands for a few years in the U.S. during grad school and then while working.  They both said that American goods, food, housing, and some services are generally a much better value--considering the quality for the price paid-- than in any of the other places they'd lived, which included the U.K., Singapore and China, besides their home countries.