‘Tis the season

In China, mandarin orange is the fruit of the season in Spring. They are abundant till the season ends.

In Singapore though, it is a little odd. Apparently Chinese mandarin oranges are lumped under Chinese New Year festivity goods, as opposed to normal fruits. Right after Chinese New Year they will disappear from shelves like the Harvey Weinstein from Hollywood. For some reason the importers will cease importing them. After that we can find the very similar Pakistani kino, but not mandarin oranges from China.

This is one of the mysterious ways of businesses in Singapore that I have yet to figure out. Singapore is importing fruits and vegetables from China all the time and I don’t see why mandarin oranges should be treated any different. If anyone knows why please enlighten me.

So every year we make it a point to buy as much Chinese mandarin oranges as we can finish, because this is the only time of the year when we can find these. We would buy them in cases and keep them in the refrigerator. This is sort of our annual ritual.

This year though, I found out I can buy them online. The website says 18 oranges a box at $9, the picture also says buy 1 gets 2. I didn’t quite believe the later because it is a little too good to be true. So I ordered 3 boxes, and I really got 9 boxes, or 162 oranges. This is after the case of 40 oranges we just finished yesterday.

If we eat 4 a day, it will last for 40 days. This is clearly unacceptable, they will go bad before that. So a day or two of fruit detox diet is in order, and ought to deplete the stock pretty quickly.

I have not researched the chronic health effects of excessive orange binging, but I’m guessing it will be somewhere along the line of loose and brilliantly hued stools.