There has been an extreme (or should I say, eggs-treme) egg shortage in New Zealand all of this year. It first started just before Christmas last year when eggs completely disappeared from shelves. While there is more egg supply now, it is still not back to normal. One of the main reasons for the egg shortage was that New Zealand banned caged hens. It sounds like a good thing – ban battery hens, but resulted in no eggs on supermarket shelves. And when there were eggs, customers could only buy a limit of 1 egg product per person. The price of my usual brand of eggs increased 50% in 10 months. So I’m now paying 1.5 times more for eggs compared with last year. That’s if I can even find any eggs to buy.
To cope with the egg shortage, I’ve had to resort to ridiculous measures, such as:
- Begging for eggs from my friend who has chickens
- Rationing what eggs I do have
- I stopped baking
- Going around different shops to see if they have any eggs for sale, like an egg treasure hunt!
- Buying meal kits that deliver ingredients to cook at home, but specifically choosing recipes with eggs, so I would get some eggs. I did this a few times, even though twice, an egg was delivered cracked or broken.
At Easter time, there were no eggs at my local supermarket. Instead, they filled the egg shelves with chocolate eggs. I felt like that was some kind of bad joke.
What has all of this got to do with footwear? Well, Sanrio (the makers of Hello Kitty) has a cartoon character called Gudetama, which is a cartoon egg. Gudetama means ‘lazy egg’ in Japanese, and I bought a pack of Gudetama ankle socks. Gudetama is an egg, famous for always being tired, and sleeping using a rasher of bacon as a blanket. Gudetama is famous for saying “Meh”. He always wants to sleep more and do nothing.
With the egg shortage this year, I’m always on the look out for eggs, and I’m a sucker for packaging. I’ve been known to buy things just because I like the packaging. So, the packaging of the Gudetama socks caught my eye and I bought it because of its creative packaging.
As Gudetama says, “Sleep more, worry less.”
shihyenshoes 