Counting to 10 for one's fruits and vegetables

Today's topic: the hellish produce weighing counter at Lulu Hypermarket in Al Wahda Mall, Abu Dhabi.

Back in Canada, I loved going to the grocery store. The big aisles, the bright lights, the yummy selection of foods.

Here the grocery store is not my happy place. It is a mob scene, most times. And the worst part is the fruits and vegetables section. During my first week here, I learned the hard way that the fruits and vegetables are weighed in the fruit and vegetable section and not at the till. That, by the way, was not a good day.

Anyway, there is no way to describe the produce department at any one of Abu Dhabi's "hypermarkets", which is their funny word for the kind of grocery store that sells lettuce and flat screens. The best is to say it is an amalgam of a carnival bumper carts game, with the screaming sounds of a preschool and the too-close, everyone-is-budding-in-front-of-me mentality of an obnoxious nightclub.

No wonder I order out so often.