My wife, who's been here for a year already and is earning at some level in the local currency has long since forgotten about the abject horror of this phenomenon: going pale and cold when realising what you'd pay for this or that item in South Africa and hesitating with your hand poised over the supermarket trolley while you play the Adel-newbie mindgame of Is This Essential?
And as illogical as it may be to try and make the comparison, being a newbie, I still do it, especially as I'm not earning local disposable income yet and am effectively paying for stuff with my hard earned South African Rands where the R5 you'd hand out to a car-guard (remember them? The only creatures on the planet, other than cockroaches that are likely to survive a nuclear armageddon...) is just 50c here and doesn't feature as actual money. The fact that the coinage here covers a face value of R20 puts it in perspective - a perspective I am still struggling with when one pays the equivalent of R50 for a cup of coffee or R80 for a bowl of chips...
Yes, I know you can't really do that but I still do. Sorry. I try not to but - well...erm...ja, you know the story - you've all been through it.
Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - is more expensive here if you work it on the direct comparison basis (and yes, I heard you the first time - I know you can't really do that...) - that is with the exception of one thing that (it would appear) Australians never actually buy - that's right, non-alcoholic beer!
Oh, and bank charges - I love the bank charges here - far from the usurious theft that is perpetrated in South Africa.
And here's the thing - for a society that's so well behaved (for the most part), sticking to speed limits, honouring honesty box type trading (I love that too), paying their fines, not bribing cops - they are very diligent at avoiding the drink-driving phenomenon and cautiously monitor their intake if they know they'll need to drive afterwards.
Which would make you think they'd be all for lighter and even non-alcoholic beers... I personally stopped drinking alcohol way back in 2001 and it was a mission to get non-alcoholic beers back then, very hard indeed. The ethos toward beer without alcohol was much like a business exec's attitude toward their morning java-fix - if it was decaffeinated, what was the point?
But things have changed since the days of the insipid, watery tasting piddle they tried to pass off as alcohol-free beer - there are awesome 0% beers around nowadays that are wholesome, full-bodied and actually taste like beer and one of them, Birell is made right here in Adelaide by the only Australian owned brewery left in the country, Coopers.
And, even using the direct exchange comparison, it's still cheaper by the litre than any non-alcoholic, or "unleaded" beers we got back in South Africa, all of which, it must be said, were imported.
So why don't they sell it in bottle shops?
Why don't they sell it in bars? Why don't they sell it in restaurants?
Why only in the supermarkets or Dan Murphy outlets exclusively?
It makes no sense. Well, not to me at least.
Unless the only reason for which people think beer was put on the planet was for us to get drunk every time we partook of it and/or be over the legal limit...Surely not?
Don't people like beer for the taste of it alone?
I know I do.
I mean, hey - they even got Charlie Sheen on the stuff for pete's sake - and he's got tiger blood!
But then again, I don't eat meat either so I guess I'm not a real South African or Aussie to begin with.
Yet even in our anarchic, sort of first-world/third-world hybridised society that is South Africa, most bars had Becks Blue or Cobra zero or Bavaria Malt - there was usually an option but not here.
It amazes me.
When one politely enquires of the beerista (or whatever one calls the accredited retail specialist at the bottle shop or pub) if they might stock any non-alcoholic beers, they regard you as if you've just appeared from a shimmering ovoid interstellar craft and are surely not of this galaxy or perhaps even this universe.
There is, however, certainly one constant in this shared universe (unless it's Dan Murphy's) the answer to that question is always - no.
What's not articulated vocally perhaps is the: what good is beer without alcohol, mate?
And so it goes...
As mentioned: in a society where one can encounter a scenario with two old tannies armed with hand-held clicker counters at a local fair, who are monitoring the number of people in the alcohol-serving zone ensuring that at no time would that number exceed 200, you'd think they'd give a little more mileage to a decent, Adelaidian home-brewed beverage that offers a wonderful option to beer drinkers who'd like to have more than perhaps just one....You would think...
Then again, if that's all I've got to worry about, I guess it's not such a bad deal.
There's a helluva lot to be thankful for and believe me, I am.
Perspective is always a great leveller of playing fields.
Cheers!
Oh, and bank charges - I love the bank charges here - far from the usurious theft that is perpetrated in South Africa.
And here's the thing - for a society that's so well behaved (for the most part), sticking to speed limits, honouring honesty box type trading (I love that too), paying their fines, not bribing cops - they are very diligent at avoiding the drink-driving phenomenon and cautiously monitor their intake if they know they'll need to drive afterwards.
Which would make you think they'd be all for lighter and even non-alcoholic beers... I personally stopped drinking alcohol way back in 2001 and it was a mission to get non-alcoholic beers back then, very hard indeed. The ethos toward beer without alcohol was much like a business exec's attitude toward their morning java-fix - if it was decaffeinated, what was the point?
But things have changed since the days of the insipid, watery tasting piddle they tried to pass off as alcohol-free beer - there are awesome 0% beers around nowadays that are wholesome, full-bodied and actually taste like beer and one of them, Birell is made right here in Adelaide by the only Australian owned brewery left in the country, Coopers.
And, even using the direct exchange comparison, it's still cheaper by the litre than any non-alcoholic, or "unleaded" beers we got back in South Africa, all of which, it must be said, were imported.
So why don't they sell it in bottle shops?
Why don't they sell it in bars? Why don't they sell it in restaurants?
Why only in the supermarkets or Dan Murphy outlets exclusively?
It makes no sense. Well, not to me at least.
Unless the only reason for which people think beer was put on the planet was for us to get drunk every time we partook of it and/or be over the legal limit...Surely not?
Don't people like beer for the taste of it alone?
I know I do.
I mean, hey - they even got Charlie Sheen on the stuff for pete's sake - and he's got tiger blood!
But then again, I don't eat meat either so I guess I'm not a real South African or Aussie to begin with.
Yet even in our anarchic, sort of first-world/third-world hybridised society that is South Africa, most bars had Becks Blue or Cobra zero or Bavaria Malt - there was usually an option but not here.
It amazes me.
When one politely enquires of the beerista (or whatever one calls the accredited retail specialist at the bottle shop or pub) if they might stock any non-alcoholic beers, they regard you as if you've just appeared from a shimmering ovoid interstellar craft and are surely not of this galaxy or perhaps even this universe.
There is, however, certainly one constant in this shared universe (unless it's Dan Murphy's) the answer to that question is always - no.
What's not articulated vocally perhaps is the: what good is beer without alcohol, mate?
And so it goes...
As mentioned: in a society where one can encounter a scenario with two old tannies armed with hand-held clicker counters at a local fair, who are monitoring the number of people in the alcohol-serving zone ensuring that at no time would that number exceed 200, you'd think they'd give a little more mileage to a decent, Adelaidian home-brewed beverage that offers a wonderful option to beer drinkers who'd like to have more than perhaps just one....You would think...
Then again, if that's all I've got to worry about, I guess it's not such a bad deal.
There's a helluva lot to be thankful for and believe me, I am.
Perspective is always a great leveller of playing fields.
Cheers!
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