Beneath these green mountains where spring rules the year, the irbarbutus and loquat in season appear, And feasting on lychee – 300 a day, I shouldn’t mind staying eternally here – Su Shih.
In my experience there are two types of human activity that are worthy of note and comment. The first are honorable acts. The second what Trish and I refer to as “bad form. This is a case of the former.
I wrote, briefly, in August about my wonderful visit to the Lotte International Supermarket (read mostly Asian) in Chantilly, VA. I loved the place, but it pointed out the limits of my familiarity with certain Asian ingredients, namely Asian produce. I have books that discuss them, but we don’t have the extraordinary variety at local our local Asian markets that the have at Lotte.
That evening I decided to check the iTunes store in search of app to fill in the blanks. I found a pretty good one, from Specialty Produce in San Diego, and liked it enough that I paid $1.99 for the full version. It’s not perfect. I hope they keep adding to the database. The first iten I looked up (durian) isn’t there. My biggest gripe is that the photos are web based. With an iPod that means wi-fi, something not usual at small ethnic markets. I’d give up drive space for device resident images.
But, none of that is the reason for this post. A few weeks ago, via iGor my iPod (it’s pronounced eye-gore), I was notified that SP was unveiling a Pro version and letting the Full version fade away. Because of the vagaries of the iTunes store they couldn’t just swap me out, but if purchased Pro for the same $1.99 and provided them with proof of purchase they’d refund the original.
I went ahead, even though I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear back. So it goes.
It put a smile on my face when I saw it in the mailbox. The sent me the check and took the hit for the postage. This is an honorable act. Now if they’d only open a branch in Buffalo.

