Warehouse (仓库, 倉庫, 창고)

The best lunch deal in America. The language capital of the world. Calvin Klein "rack." The depository of new books to read standing up. I never anticipated that the place I look forward to visiting the most on weekends would be a giant warehouse with giant shopping carts, but that is what my social life has devolved into: looking forward to the $1.50 hot dog and drink combo special, delving through the clothing aisle full of discount shirts, shoes, and pants in preparation for the coming winter, and standing in the middle of up to 1000 people (what's the max capacity at any given Costco? I wonder) reading a hardcover anthology called "Taylor Swift: All the Songs" while people speaking various languages like Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and unidentified Indian subcontinent language (likely Hindi) talk around me. Costco has become a cultural experience like no other for me, an all-in-one experience that stimulates all my senses (the smell of the free samples of pirogis and breaded tilapia and whatever cuisine they're hawking that week, the sounds of hundreds of people seemingly talking all at once among sounds of warehouse workers stacking carts and making machinery noises, sights of all kinds of the world's most commericialized items, the touch to feel how "soft" the produce is (one guy today who was fondling the zucchinis gave me a helpful thumbs down on all the squash/zucchini packs, noticing they were all too soft and likely not fresh, and touch, and taste... you gotta hand it to the samples, they're just yummy especially after you've fended off various other vultures who are just waiting their turn to get some free food before they run out and it takes 20 minutes to make another batch. Costco, once called Price Club (fun fact) really succeeds by appealing to all the most basic things people want, in business paralance known as "consumer staple," not "consumer discretionary." I'm definitely more of a "consumer staple" shopper (and by the looks of Costco customers, I'm not the only one of my ethnicity who is), and for the low low price of $65 per year, I can go into the "Warehouse," as I like to call it, as many times as I want, when I want (as long as it fits into the Gold membership times of entry, Executive membership allows a full 30 minutes earlier to enter!) and as long as I can find a parking space in the football stadium-sized parking lot outside. You can even play games of bumper carts inside the mall as it's just a crazy maze of navigating people, carts, Costco employees, little kids running around, spilled fruit just lying on the ground, it's amazing more accdients don't happen like some of the Youtube videos I've seen of people bumping into others and causing altercations. Costco cart drivers are like vehicle drivers on the open road: there are some good drivers who stay in their lane and let others move, and then there are some bad drivers who are oblivious to others, clog up the key entry way, leave their carts in the middle of a busy lane to go grab some Lady Godiva chocolate, it's a jungle out there. But I love it. I will miss Costco if it ever closes down or changes its model; it's in its own little world. Preparing for Jeopardy is also like being in different world all the time. You think that trivia should just be its own corner of the universe that you can just all that knowledge as one complete package, but then I realize as I'm studying that there are some major categories that are just entire worlds in of themselves. History of the world is its own world of rulers, presidents, continents, wars; science is its own world with sub-worlds of human anatomy that delve into muscles, bones, cardiovascular systems, endocrine systems, organs, but the world that confounds me and excites me more than any others: the wide wide world of pop culture, just the entire catalogue of every movie that's ever been made, TV show that all seem to have 7 seasons each (sometimes more, Criminal Minds on CBS is entering its 19th season called Criminal Minds: Revolution, the Simpsons still chugs along with its loyal fanbase and continuously creates more quotes and running gags that people need to keep up with, and General Hosptial the soap opera continues the drama in Port Charles, NY (how much drama can there be in upstate New York)? By the way rest in peace to June Lockhart, a General Hospital alum and Lassie, Leave it to Beaver who was the celebrity fan of the Los Angeles Lawyers Philharmonic and turned 100 years old earlier this year! But yea the world of pop culture is somewhat unique to other trivia categories because it is constantly changing as things become more "popular" and fade out of being "popular," TV shows get cancelled, new shows spring up all the time so that it's the most dynamic category, requiring like a system update every year to incorporate all the new Oscar winners, Grammy winners, Tony winners, No. 1 Billboard Hits, Songs trending on TikTok, etc. It's exhausting, and you can only fully appreciate the sheer monstrous volume of it all if you binge watch "Pop Culture Jeopardy" on Amazon Prime as I have.......twice. Now on a 3rd watch, I'm still learning new stuff, most of which will probably be useless very soon like expired milk, if I haven't forgotten it already by then. Sigh.