Things we take for granted

Before I embarked on an assignment in Tashkent Uzbekistan, I only had a vague idea where the country was. All I knew were those 'stan' countries are, somewhere on the otherside of the Himalayas. I read what little information I could find on the internet. Sounds interesting with a lot of history and being on the silk road and all. I must have been too adventurous, naive and ignorant put together to to take off to that landlocked country. My imagination was captured by the romance of Rustam and Zohrab and the greatness of Amir Timur on his big stallion roaming the plains.
Well, I took the job at a University in Tashkent. It was not so much of the job, which I learnt, but the whole way of life in a country that has been in the communist block. Of course I expected everything to be different, but i did not anticipate that everything is controlled. You shop for grocery at the government designated place. Buy your rationed food and you cannot choose what you want. If you are allowed so much beef for the week, that was what you get, bones and fat and all. You can't ask the butcher to trim the fat like we malaysian do at the butcher. You are allowed only a few pieces of 'pon' (bread) for a day and can't exceed the amount without question. Well, this is after Uzbekistan became an independent from USSR. Things were the same as before.
However, after a few months I was there, things looked a little different. We could shop at black market or at open market, but the attitude of shop assistants were still the the same. You would not be attended to, until the assistants finished their sembang. At one time I was so mad for being made to wait for a long time, i told the sale person that if she was in Malaysia, she would not have a job the next day. I like to give you an example how we take things for granted. I went to a government shopping place and i saw a shirt I wanted to buy for my land lady's son. The color was red, but I wanted a blue one desplayed behind the red one. The sale person would not sell me the blue one until she sold the red. The one on top had to be sold first!. All the merchandize were behind the counter, not hanged on racks like we are used to.
Little things that we take for granted are not so in Tashkent (during my stay there). Like I said before, we could not buy more than 4 pieces of bread in a day. Imagine that if you have more than 6 people living in a household. There was no easily available cooking oil nor was there plenty of food. For cooking oil my landlady used lard from the hump of the sheep. I got tired of eating 'soupa' or soup everyday of the week. Soup made of very fatty meat and yellow carrot, potatoes and onions. People there don't waste food. They ate all on their plate and wiped their plate clean with the bread.
to be continued