Procrastinations runs the ESF...
From March 22nd...
This past Friday, my dad wanted fish for dinner. So around 1 PM, we headed to this huge Asian market in the southern part of my town.
The Asian population in my town varies, but there are more Asians living in the south of the city because the subdivision, cookie-cutter houses are located there.
Personally, these houses, albeit large in size, aren't built to last seventy-five years, like my home.
What can you do when your McMansion turns into a McDisaster? Don't know, ask the housing developer.
The market we were going to was located in a bigger building, so it's a mini-mall, with the anchor store being a supermarket, maybe the size of a Albertson's or Kroger. As we walked into the supermarket, I was hit with this smell that I couldn't describe any better than, "It smelled of Asia."
Seriously. The front wall of store was packed with bags of rice.
All that rice in one place collectively gave off a sickly, sweet smell. Like death, but you know, of the Asian variety. Walking throughout the store, it was full of cool products, like iced Japanese coffee and South Korean Del Monte plum juice. Also included, Middle Eastern metal boxes of crackers and a complete aisle dedicated to teas.
The teas, just like the rice, gave off a terrible collective smell.
At the back of the store, sharing the space with a meat counter, was a seafood counter double the length of the its counterpart. Most of the display case was dedicated to seafood on ice, with the remaining portion holding tanks full of live fish, crap animals (who the fucks eats periwinkles?), and other legged sea animals.
Behind the counter were men at a sink behind Plexiglas cutting and washing fish for customers. They were hard at work, with the sounds of knives chopping away and water guns washing away the remains.
My mom was looking near the end of the iced-fish display when the man behind the counter asked her if she'd like any live fish. She told him that she would, and pulling out a net, he retrieved three trout of one of the four tanks. She picked two, and he placed the third back in the tank. I was standing behind her, behind the cart, looking at the man doing his job.
The man placed the fish on a dirty scale, and weighed the fish. "3.5 libras, señoras."
She was OK with the weight, and he promptly grabbed the fish by their tail fins and placed them in a waist-high, metal shallow sink. He grabbed something gray that was leaning up against the wall next to the sink.
The ice display was blocking my view of the rest of the sink when I heard a whack, producing a hollow crack sound.
Quickly, I got out from behind the cart and looked into an open space that kept the tanks and the ice display separate The man had a pipe in his hand, and one of the two fish was lying there, with blood draining out of it. I gathered that he had hit the fish with the pipe, crushing its skull and killing it immediately. Right after he delivered the fish to the men in the back, he produced the pipe again, and he whacked the other fish.
I saw him hit the fish and heard the skull crack. In one swift motion, he lifted the pipe above his head and gave a swift downward motion and hit it left of the eye.
I felt sick and quickly backtracked to behind the cart. I had to get away, so I walked away, looking past the counter.
The man packed the cut and washed fish and handed it to my mom. She placed it in the cart, and found me looking at tofu blocks in a refrigerated display next to the seafood counter.
We walked the rest of the store, and finally checked out. $37.52, please.
I haven't forgotten that scene, because it was so graphic to begin with. It's not as bad as slaughterhouses, but damn, its just as sickening when you hear that sound.
