A Sunday Market Trip

Today is Sunday, and oddly, I felt quite unmotivated, which is really weird because usually Sundays are like a special day for me. The day started slowly, but still I did the stuff I needed to do, and it wasn’t long before afternoon came. Supposedly my plan was to attend the 3:00 P.M. mass, but my eyes were really not feeling right, so I took a nap.

After relaxing, my eyes felt much better, so I opted for the next mass schedule, and that was the 4:30 mass. We arrived just in time, and since we didn’t arrive early, we don’t have a choice but to occupy the seat where it’s quite hot. Thankfully, I brought my mini-fan, which really helped me to get through the whole mass without getting super sweaty from the heat.

Usually after mass, we go straight home, but for this Sunday I’m with my mother, and she planned to buy stuff from the market. It’s been a while since I last joined her on her market trip because most of the time, she does that during weekdays. So when the mass ended, we headed straight to it and started looking for the stuff she was going to buy. My parents are really fond of fish, so she decided to have fish for dinner. It took minutes of checking fish stalls before she finally found the right ones that have fresh ones.

It’s really puzzling for me how she’s able to tell what is fresh fish and what is not because for me they look and smell the same. I already searched before how to tell them apart, but mostly those methods really need touch—like you need to press and feel the texture of it, and also you need to look inside the gills to see if they’re reddish or not. I did try doing that one time when my mother asked me to go on a market trip alone. Unfortunately, that was both my first and last, and I think it’s obvious why.

After buying the fishes, she also decided to buy some sea grapes, which really made me happy because I’m really fond of them. With vinegar and onions, they sure are a great appetizer that would make my eating really good. When we’re done with it, we then head outside the fish market and proceed to the vegetable stalls nearby. Vegetables near our home are quite pricy; that’s why when we’re in the market, we really make the most of it and buy the vegetables we need.

There are really a lot of stalls with good-looking vegetables, but my mother only goes to that certain stall where she knows the vendor. Since there aren’t a lot of customers, our market trip was quite shorter than usual, and so after getting all the vegetables, we finally went to our last stop, and it was in the fruit stall where my mother again picked the oranges she’ll be buying. My brother’s quite sick, so he definitely needs some vitamin C boost, and so we opted for the natural way—the oranges!

Our market trip was almost at its end when we stopped again at the usual bakery where we buy our bread. It’s been there since my elementary days, and I’m definitely glad to see it still there because a lot of businesses really closed down for good when the pandemic swooped in, and it’s somehow upsetting that some of the familiar places I knew were getting replaced with newer ones. It’s sad, yet there’s nothing I can do with it because change is constant.

Anyway, back to the bread, there are a lot of selections since at that time it’s just past 6:00, when they usually finish baking another batch of the fresh bread. The bread we ate was still warm, and it was definitely delicious. Also, there’s that new bread I saw, and it kinda looks like a mooncake.

Some of them have Chinese characters on them, but the one that I get looks like leaf patterns, and since it’s new, I kinda hesitated tasting it because I’m not sure if its taste would suit my preference. Thankfully, it isn’t too sweet because I have a low tolerance for sweet foods, so as much as possible, I definitely don’t eat much of those.

After munching it down, we head home, and thankfully there’s a multicab that’s about to cross the pedestrian. They’re still on the stop, so we were able to move in it and finally had a ride way home. And that’s it—that's how our Sunday market trip ended! Thank you for reading through up until here and hope to see you around.