To Market, To Market

I woke up to greet the sun this morning. Bleary-eyed, but still, I greeted it. The purpose was three-fold: have breakfast parents and sister, a weekly routine for the three of them since mother commenced her english lessons; launder the bucket of clothes waiting to be washed; and finally, find that bottle of Sifoné my pretty boy has been bugging me to do, and buy it.

The latter of which is no mean feat, if you consider the fact that the line's last remembered spokesperson, Vivian Zhou (pictured), has long since retired.

Well okay, semi-retired, because amazingly, I found a site on her still updated and maintained, and apparantly it seems that she still makes the rare public appearance/product endorsement. But you get my drift.

And, what applies to dear Vivian seems to apply to Sifoné too, for, sitting unassumingly on the floor of one of the stalls of my neighbourhood market, this is what I found:



Actually, there was only one bottle, tucked snugly between her more popular rivals, Organics and Pantene, but I spoke to the uncle of the stall and he fished out another three for me. Unfort, they were all either "Scalp Care" (for dandraff-prone hair) or "Intensive Care" (for dry/permed/coloured hair), neither of which The Boyfriend felt he was suited for. Uncle said he couldn't get to the "Soft and Smooth" range (for normal/oil hair), buried under a mountain of stock as it was, so I offered to wait. He told me to take a walk around, which was something I hadn't done in a good 10-odd years, and so I decided to take up his suggestion. These were a couple of the sights I took in:

A revisit of my least favourite kind of stall as a child. There I'd be, gingerly navigating my way though the wet, slippery floor, when - flip! flop! floop! - an anxious auntie would waddle past me, spraying me with the grey water that she kicked up in her wake. These days, however, you'd be hard-pressed to find a wet market that actually lives up to its name.




One of the several unlicensed hawkers lining the market. The gaudy flowers are purported to be non-toxic, super-effective ant-icide. Going for a song at $1, it was a hot seller. Said one uncle to another who'd just purchased it, in gruff Hokkien, "Got use or not?"

Replied the other, "Buy already got use lor!" A smile escaped from my mouth. He continued, "Aiya, so cheap, just try lor."

When I went back to the stall, it was then uncle acted on his word. He must've hauled about 150 kg of goods (mostly consisting of detergent) out of his tiny but well-stock store before he could retrieve, and present to me, two bottles of scruffy shampoo of a barely-surviving brand, earning him a mere $5.40 in exchange for his herculean efforts.