How to buy canned drinks, pt. 2

The Please-Sit-Down store consists of two aisles: snacks, personal products and canned drinks in the first; cleaning supplies, school supplies, and powdered drinks in the other.

In the back are instant noodles, the ubiquitous Blue Band margarine, and cans of corned beef (I'm not sure why corned beef is so common here. Is that a Dutch thing?).

The drink selection is pretty thin today - lots of fruit-flavored tea. In the back are Fanta Strawberry, suitable for Fanta Susu, along with Sprite and Coke; the lemon thing in front is a Vitamin C drink. On the bottom row are some of those weird jelly snacks that seem to be very big throughout Asia these days; Happy Jus, which I assume is pure sugar; and non-fizzy Calpico fermented milk drink, which is vastly inferior to the fizzy kind.

There are two plastic stools at the little counter in front, and they always ask you politely to sit down while they ring up your order. I suspect it's because of their fancy computer system; they have to type in the code for every product, and it takes a while.

So we have some canned coffee, Pocari Sweat, which is like Gatorade, a Coke for Chad, a bottle of tea, and some Calpico. You want to pay with a 50,000 note (about $5) and get change, because cab drivers and warungs often have trouble breaking a 50,000; it's good to get small bills whenever you can. They're very nice about making change here.

Then load up your bag and head home.

Bu Dena has just made some of her tasty hard-boiled eggs in curry sauce, so maybe a little takeaway lunch is in order.