Ketchup snobs

When we lived in Seattle M and I were snobs of a sort, as most girls-in-groups will tend to be, although we were the politely de-clawed kind of snobs. Very quietly dissing someone's choice of footwear or blush and never outright insulting anyone for their fashion faux pas, however disturbing...but snobs all the same.

It happens when you work retail, especially when you're pushing pret. M worked the floors a heck of a lot longer than I ever did; thriving on the commission checks, the monthly allowance, and the promise of a constantly overflowing closet. I prefer to stock my bank account and my closet in other ways, abhoring the long hours and equally snobby customers, but am as yet left with some vestige of having been a picky picky clothes horse.

Of course, now we both live in Kathmandu, Nepal - not exactly the fashion capital of the world. While girls here tend to be more style conscious than their Indian counterparts they do still seem to struggle with color and pattern and M and I will fall into suppressed giggles and a gut-reaction mutual 'tut-tut' every now and then over a crazily dressed mannequin posed as garish window display [most recently we photographed one sporting lavender leg warmers, a purple negligee, one of the amazing hand knit Nepali mountain-people sweaters all topped off with matching hat and ear flaps - darn good fashion]. In a city where acid wash and neon green fishnet shawls can not only easily be found but are pressed on the unsuspecting consumer from every direction, these moments of spontaneous laughter between friends are once again common, and all the more precious for having been denied us so long.

It's been ages since I'm able to laugh in person with the most beloved of all females on the planet (next to my mom) and I'm so happy in the knowledge that she's literally right up the street once more. To sit down for a lunch of steamed veg momos and ketchup with M across the table as if four years hadn't passed between us is six kinds of wonderful.

The only thing disturbing this perfect-once-again scenario is the ketchup...
Ketchup in India was a sticky, watery, agent-orange concoction with ten times too much sugar. Nepal, about as much a center of production as it is a fashion hub, relies on its gigantic neighbors for condiments and imports everything from India and China. It doesn't seem the Chinese are very big on ketchup so we end up with the unpleasant orange stuff everywhere we go.
Before our first holiday visit to Nepal M was daily begging me to lift a few hundred ketchup packets from the local McDonald's. Like a pusher to a junky needing a fix I would promise, "Just enough to get you through the next few weeks..."

Mellowed by travel, a bit of age, and the simple art of not picking on other people for no good reason, we now turn our noses up at ketchup and marvel at how disgusting such a simple thing can be when done wrong; spending half of our marketing trips hunting for plastic squeeze bottles of Heinz or even Hunt's - anything stamped 'Made in America'.

We're still snobs. I guess some things never change.