Rant Two: Propoganda Trucks

Well, to be completely fair, they aren't actually propoganda trucks.  They just sound like it.  About a two minute walk from my door there is an incredible market that goes on for blocks and blocks and happens to sell just about everything under the sun.  It is open really long hours and makes shopping for anything an absolute convience.

Which leads me to question why there is a need for pickup trucks to drive up and down my street with a loudspeaker mounting the roof announcing the fact that they're selling fruit, fish, or whatever the hell they have.  Obviously the loudspeaker needs to be loud enough to be heard indoors (otherwise you wouldn't know some guy has a flatbed of stinky ass fish outside your door, right?) which also means it is loud enough to wake you up.  Now I obviously have a slightly skewed sleep schedule due to working in the afternoon but being woken up every day by some guy selling shit I could buy 2 minutes away anyway is quite annoying.  Literally everyday I wake up to the tune of a guy selling shit which can all be purchased minutes away anyway.  I could understand if they had some rarities in the back of their truck but lemons, apples, etc. aren't exactly the Hope diamond.  They have their loudspeaker message on repeat and to me it sounds exactly like Nazi propoganda or the "Bring out ye' dead" guys from the Middle Ages.  Just some monotone announcment of "Fish for sale" over and over all day long.  How the drivers of the trucks maintain sanity is a pretty big mystery to me.

The thing is, this might make sense in the U.S. where people are inheritly lazy and there isn't a giant market 5 blocks away.  I could see people actually buying fruit/vegetables/fish/meat at a higher frequency if the guy was driving around the neighborhood with it all loaded in the back of a cart.  It would save you a trip to the grocery store and Americans are all about convience.  But Koreans aren't lazy and they have a fantastic market just minutes away.  Come to think of it, I never really see the guys in the trucks selling anything.  They're generally just driving around the streets without a customer in sight.  I assume they're charging a slightly higher price (for the convience) which may all but eliminate any chance they have of making high sales.  I assume most Koreans plan their meals ahead and don't make spontaneous fish purchasing decisions at 9 a.m.  But again, that's just me.

Take it easy, but take it.