Walking into the grocery store, I pushed my cart down the cereal aisle. Stopping to read the nutritional labels of my favourite brands, I parked my cart in the middle of the aisle.

You know how they have rules and regulations for literally everything? I often wonder why they don’t post any signs in grocery stores regulating how to drive the carts.

While I was choosing which cereal I should buy… sweet and delicious, or healthy and boring, an angry lady, pushing her own cart, snapped, “Excuse me.”

What a polite culture? Even when you are mad as hell because someone is blocking the whole grocery aisle, you still nicely say, “Excuse me.” It’s quite amazing, but maybe it’s time grocery chains put up signs for us immigrants so we know how to drive the carts in the aisles.

It’s actually not a bad idea. It is already hard enough to learn English where ‘C A T’ and ‘K I T E’ both start with the sound ‘KH’. To be honest, the whole culture is quite confusing, so please, just put up the signs.

How are we supposed to know not to park the grocery cart in the middle of the row? Have you ever driven in India or Thailand? Try it once. You will know how you literally have to take over the road yourself. How you have to drive in a way that will protect yourself from others. There are usually 3-4 lanes merging into one lane. And if you ride a scooter?! You are a winner for at least trying to zip through the insane traffic. Just try Youtubing the traffic in India or China. Good luck with that!

Anyways, once you watch just one video, you understand why all the immigrants park their carts in the middle of nowhere… blocking the world! I know it’s not funny to North Americans, but it’s important to know from where we both come from – one from a place where traffic has no rules and the other from where you can get a ticket for illegally passing or cutting someone off. You are taught to just sit in traffic with complete patience no matter what…. even if the whole world is honking at you.

Honking in India and China is like talking. Oh yes, people there talk to each other with honks. Listening to someone swear at you is quite hard because noise pollution is so high. Good luck if you’re the one trying to do the swearing! Honking feels like you are actually accomplishing something.

As I was moving my shopping cart out of the way, I saw this lady watching another Indian lady filling up her cart with cartons of milk with curiosity. What is the big surprise? Indian people love milk. People really don’t know what happens with all that milk. Here are the details….

Indian people, especially Punjabis, buy 10-15 jugs of milk at a time, because in an Indian fridge all the dairy products (yogurt, yogurt drinks, cheese, sour cream, butter… the list is quite long) are all homemade. The best part is that all these dairy products are healthy because they are made at home in just a few easy steps.

Just boil the milk, then add lemon to it, then strain it with the strainer. Here your cheese is ready. For yogurt – boil the milk, let it cool down a bit, and then add a scoop of yogurt. Cover up the pot and leave it in the oven for a few hours and the homemade yogurt is ready. It’s actually quite healthy and awesome.

All the dairy products are quite easy to make and can save you a lot of money. You can make almost 4 litres of yogurt from one jug of milk!

Everything in an Indian home is actually pretty much cooked from scratch. Have you ever walked down an Indian block around 6-7 pm? It smells amazing…. Of curry! Maybe the city should think about naming one of the streets ‘Curry Street’.

Don’t think life for an immigrant is easy just because they are parking the cart in the middle of nowhere. Most of life is a culture shock.

It’s hard when your children tell you they are not ready for marriage at age 30?

“What? My kid is 30 years old and not married? I had them when I was 18!”

The older generation just wanted to grow up, get married and have kids. Then they got a job just to feed their family. But nowadays, the younger generation wants to get everything first and may be if there is some time left then they will get married. If marriage goes well, the couple will start to have babies after a few years. Everything seems to be the opposite of what they came from.

Anyways, I went to the next aisle and parked my cart along the side, so no one would be blocked again by the blocked knowledge of an immigrant!!