I Finally Have A Bottle of Solo!

Yesterday morning, as I was about to leave home to meet HLQ for lunch in IKEA, the postman I had been waiting for all week arrived with a parcel on his hand. And that parcel was larger than I had anticipated. I was beaming at how huge it was. I courteously thanked him, took the parcel to my bedroom and bladed it.

Jehn had called me a few days earlier that we was surprising me with a mysterious gift, but when I saw he cancelled 'gift' on the small green customs declaration sticker, and overwrote it with 'soft drink', I began to think I have a very mentally-unsound friend. And when I saw that the postage label said 'A$27', I concluded that he was also generous. Jehn had sent me a bottle of 1.25 liter of Solo - all the way from Tasmania, Australia.

I left the parcel on my bed, rushed to IKEA, and breathlessly told HLQ about it. HLQ reacted: "Wouldn't it burst from all the travelling?!". Scientists. They're always thinking that way.

We came back to my house to watch the Korea vs Italy match, and I painstakingly tried to retrieve my good ol' Solo, who had travelled from far. Jehn had furiously taped it with clear packing tape, so much and so tight that I almost broke my soft fingernails in the process of unearthing the bottle.

I was very pleased at Jehn's attentiveness. He had remembered that over one of our tele conversations, I had specified that I prefer the Lemon & Lime flavour to its original Lemon flavour. He had sent me the correct flavour ;-)

Not many people seem to know that Solo comes in 2 flavours. I don't know how I stumbled upon loving Solo, although it dawned on me much later after I started to love it, that Ichiro has been loving it since Day 1 I got to know him. I started to remember that he would not drink any other soft drink other than Solo, which naturally woudl mean he would not buy any other soft drink other than Solo. He would always have a few bottles/cans of Solo stocked up in his fridge at home, so limited are my choices that when I sneaked out from his bed to the kitchen for a drink, my choice was either one of his Solos or Mount Franklin. I take the water. I don't knwo why but I just wasn't attracted to Solo then. It just didn't entice me at all.

Counting back, I started to drink Solo after I moved into Atiqah's apartment in Malvern, Melbourne. I started to go to Coles and Safeway every alternate days or so, as I had all the time in the world, and nothing to do (same life here now).

I recall a wonderful shopping experience at Coles and with Solo: I was at the Chadstone outlet of Coles, when I picked up a 2 liter PET bottle of Solo, and the barcode pricetag on the shelf had stated A$1.60 and it was on sale, but when I checked out, the cashier (well, the scanner, actually) charged me another higher price. I usually wouldn't point out the error, but that day I did.

She called for one of her colleagues to verify, and I was right, so she said to me that I will get that product for free for pointing out the error. Then I remember reading some labels usually pasted on their checkout counters that if the scanner doesnt scan you the price quoted on the barcode pricetag on the shelf, you get the first quantity on the house, and the remaining quantities at the lower price! Yippee! I had done myself some justice! I've spent so much in Coles over the 2 years that I lived in Australia that it's high time I get some rewards for favouring them over other supermarkets!

I remember telling Tony that the way to judge an Australian suburb's civilisation is by determining if there is a Coles in that suburb. I also recalled he agreed.

On the day I was leaving for Singapore, I had a bottle of unfinished Solo in the fridge in Malvern, so I poured it into my Rubbermaid tumbler, and snugged it vertically in my handbag, into the airport, and flew millions of miles to Singapore and into my Singapore fridge. Needless to say, it took me a few weeks to have the heart to gulp it down. Now I have another bottle that I just could not stomach it. It will just stay as a decoration and a memory for me.

I think I will place it in the fridge with a warning on it: "Do Not Drink".

P/S I had a tough time locating Solo's URL. I had gone to Yahoo! Australia's search engine and entered 'schweppes' several times but it bore no results at all, but after a few attempts it did. Weird.