June 1 – Oh how I miss the choices and instant gratification that is Amazon. 

            There are two problems with shopping here in New Zealand.  First, there is no Amazon.  Second, there are no mega-retailers like Walmart or Target.  We have traveled back in time to the pre-online days when shopping means going from store to store picking up what you need and being stuck with whatever selection or lack of selection they have.  If anything good can be said of Amazon, if you can think of it, you can find it and someone will ship it to you.  Here, we have to shop Amazon Australia where the selection is very limited and the shipping takes weeks.  We often end up ordering from the US Amazon but that can get expensive.  

            Worse, we cannot rely on one stop superstores to fill the Amazon void.  There is no one place where you can shop for clothes and sporting goods and housewares and groceries and whatever else you can think of.  If I want something for the cats, I have to go to the pet store.  If I need gym equipment, I have to go to the fitness store.  If I want home stuff like small appliances, sheets, that sort of thing, I go to the home store.  If I want a book, I go to the book store.  Office supplies, well, good luck to you.  Groceries are found at the grocery store.  Some grocery stores are large, most are small, and each chain has its own niche.  There are mega-building stores similar to Lowe’s and Home Depot, so that is a relief.  There is no giant pharmacy chain.  They are trying, but mostly a pharmacy, or the chemist, is a small store with not much selection.  There is a Macy’s-like department store called Farmer’s that I have yet to visit but is still not anything akin to a superstore.  

            I know that folks in the U.S. do still shop store-to-store as I am describing.  That is fine. My issue with store shopping is the limited and limiting selections.  There might be two colors, not six.  Items may or may not be in stock.  It is a total crap shoot.  Give me the ability to choose.  To me, that is what online shopping is all about. As a consequence, I have not shopped at a mall or done anything like going store-to-store for years.  

       We had pretty much everything delivered.  We knew all of the online retail sites.  Pet supplies, groceries, office, home and garden, and whatever else we could think of, we would get from Amazon or some other on-line store.  With those kinds of options, we never had to settle for what was in stock and we did not have to leave the house.   

            Here, we are trying to get stuff delivered so we don’t have to run from store to store.  But not all stores deliver, there is usually a charge, and the selection is often limited to what they sell.  Just as an example, I wanted to buy something as simple as bathroom rugs.  I tried three home stores, and the selection was just terrible.  Gray, black, tan.  Gray black, tan.   It was maddening.  I did not want to just settle for what they had—sad colors and cheap materials.  I finally turned to Amazon AU and I found a few better choices.  In the U.S. I could think of probably half a dozen online retailers who I could buy from and more than a few stores that I could have gone to that would have had better choices.  

            Then there is food shopping.  If I want to have any chance of choices in ingredients, I will have to wander from small store to small store.  Today I found a tiny deli that stocked Middle Eastern ingredients and Peruvian ingredients.  I was filled with joy.  But it is going to take up a lot of time to pursue what I want.  

            And that is what it is really all about—I am used to having choices at hand.  The way it is here, sometimes you just have to take what they have or spend an enormous amount of time searching.   I am sure I will learn to make do but going from so many choices it was hard to chose to lack of any choices at all is sad.