Supply Run

The wife and I decided to attempt a supply run today. We needed to get some maintenance and preventive medicine for ourselves and Loola.

My cousin posted that crowds at Shopwise Sucat wasn’t so bad on Tuesday around Lunch so even if we took 4 hours to get initial quarantine supplies last Friday, we figured that was the best place to get some groceries and meds since there was a Mercury Drug on the ground floor.

Right after breakfast, we left The Child with his grandparents watching season five of Paw Patrol, even if he had already seen all six seasons. That should keep him busy while we were out since we didn’t know if the crowds would be bad today and how long we would be out.

When we got to Shopwise, the parking lot was starting to get full, so Rej went up to the grocery while I parked and checked the line at the pharmacy.

The crowd wasn’t so bad yet at that time but more people started arriving as we went around the supermarket.

They had no more stock of alcohol, bactidol (mouthwash) and cleaning supplies (bleach) were limited to two per transaction. The pork at the meat section was almost gone, I was barely able to get ground pork (giniling) and pork cubes (for Adobo). Beef and chicken was still well stocked.

When we got to the cashier, they had silver duct tape to mark the floor so people can maintain a sufficient “social distance” or one meter from the next person. All counters were open and there were at least 3 people waiting in line at each of them. The lines moved rather quickly since people seemed to only be getting essentials and nobody was hoarding. I did notice that many were buying large bottles of mineral water. I figured their areas didn’t have any more water delivery services that were operating. Fortunately we were still able to get water delivered yesterday.

While Rej took care of the groceries, I went downstairs to line up at the pharmacy. There were lots of people waiting for their number to be called. When I got there they were serving number 3 and I was number 22. They had five pharmacists serving customers (two dedicated to the senior citizen line) and one dedicated to the register.

While waiting we loaded the groceries in the car and we only waited another 15 minutes for our number to be called. GCash cashless payment was working fine and we were done in five minutes.

Heading home we got bread and peanut butter along the way. There were also a lot of people at the other Mercury Drug branches. Some of the restaurants had signs that they were open for take out only or Grab Food service.

Fortunately there were no checkpoints along the way that would restrict our movement to get supplies. We should be good for the next five days before another resupply is needed.