Learning About Earth - With Onkie the Vranoian

Shopping

A/N: Happy Valentines / Chinese New Year, everyone!

Greetings! Today, I have been assigned to study a natural process of humanity, called shawpin.

Before we tap into our feed, let me tell you a little something about shawpin. Shawpin is a natural process done by most, if not all, human organisms. It is a process of getting those little objects made of pepper and metal (remember those?), or even a tiny card with little metal engravings, and exchanging them for many other things.

The quantity of the things received, pepper and metal given, duration of this process, and frequency of this process varies from human to human. Although the masculine portion of humanity participates in this process, it is usually the feminine portion of humanity that receives a greater quantity of things back, has a longer duration of this process, and is much more frequent in this process.

Because of this, I do believe that shawpin helps balance the equality between the males of humanity and females of humanity. That is certainly an interesting idea. Vranoia could use with something like this.

Anyway, do you have any more questions? No? Okay, time to begin observations.

I have chosen a human who performs shawpin regularly. She is known as Daphne Albert.

As you can see, first, the proper preparation is mandatory. Daphne Albert first uses a device to go through her fur. It supposedly straightens out the fur. Then, she applies a powdery substance on her face. Then, she adds another layer, this time blue, on the part of her face that is shielding her eyes. A light pink powder is spread across the side of her face, then another light pink wax is applied onto the food-eating part.

When all her additional preparations are complete, she gets a small black object with a sling that hangs around her shoulder. What a strange contraption. Even stranger, she puts a black glowing rectangle inside the black contraption, as well as another black rectangle, this time having several layers with a metallic object pasted onto it.

Perhaps shawpin requires specialized contraptions such as these?

Daphne Albert exits the area she was standing in, and enters a large red vessel right in front of the haws - is that how you call it? - she was originally inside.

The red vessel looks very much like a very small haws. Oh my Jonk! Look! The red vessel is moving! Is it some sort of machine? No, humans are too primitive to come up with that type of invention. After all, they still follow an instinctive process with no question whatsoever - shawpin. Perhaps the red vessel is a fauna. But how did Daphne Albert enter a living organism?

Hmm, it will be forever a mystery.

Anyway, as the red vessel - or fauna - continues to move, it stops right in front a large structure, similar to a very large haws. It is crawling with humans, almost like this haws attracts humans.

Ah! I know! This haws is where humans perform the process of shawpin. It is a specially-designed structure just for shawpin.

Ha! Now you see how primitive humans are? They have gone through an immense amount of trouble to construct an enormous structure dedicated to a natural primitive process in their instinctive nature. Humans should not rely on shawpin to regulate their equality. No, they should take that into their own webbers! Or...do humans have webbers?

Anyway, Daphne Albert enters this enormous haws. My Jonk! This haws has countless of chambers. Glowing symbols are stuck to the top of each chamber. What an interesting sight!

Look! Daphne Albert doesn't even glance at those glowing symbols. She goes straight to one chamber, that covers the space of around three or four regular chambers.

This makes me wonder if shawpin is based on the position of humans. Ah, so maybe it helps gender equality, but separates the poor and the wealthy. This attitude was also shown in the early culture of Vranoia.

If this is true, Daphne Albert is an important organism to human kind. Perhaps we should watch her more in the future.

Anyway, the chamber Daphne Albert enters is full of stands with interesting cloths in all shapes and sizes draped on each stand.

She picks several cloths, then enters a smaller chamber. How clever. A chamber inside a chamber. This chamber, however, is quite small. How can Daphne Albert even move sufficiently inside? It is truly a mystery.

...

...

!

?

...

How long will she be inside? It's been so long, don't you agree?

...

!!!

Oh! She has finally exited the small chamber. Her cloths have changed. Is she using the cloths inside the chamber? I assume that's an incredibly serious criminal offense.

And can you believe it? She repeats this several times. I doubt this is the traditional method of shawpin. If anything, she is violating and dishonoring the process of shawpin. How shameful.

Look at how she struts to that human behind the...what do you call that? Tabel? The tabel-human receives a small square with metal engravings. She brushes it against a curious contraption, slides the multiple cloths into several objects that bear a strong resemblance to the black-slinged contraption Daphne Albert is carrying, except apparently constructed of brown unattractive pepper.

Daphne Albert exits the chamber, and...hmm, it seems that the process of shawpin is complete.

Now, I must admit that I am a bit bewildered by this. For example, how does this improve the equality between the two genders of humanity? Why is it an essential process in their lives?

Perhaps the process Daphne Albert performed was not the acceptable way of shawpin. How odd. I and my colleague, Garn, did a specific background check on Daphne Albert - we deciphered that she has had no criminal offense.

Garn and I will look into the process of shawpin. For now, we will proceed with another topic.

A/N: Hoped you liked this! It was a bit longer than my other chapters. Honestly, it was so fun writing about shopping in an alien's perspective. Please vote and comment if you liked this chapter. Thanks! :-)