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This snack pack contains two kiwifruit—the gold variety grown in New Zealand. Gold kiwifruit is sweeter than the green kind.

It comes with a combination spoon and knife—a spife—made of the bio-plastics of fruit waste (skin peels, fruit hair, flowers, and waste fruit).

Using the pointy, serrated end of the spife, cut the kiwifruit in half.

Using the spoon, scoop up the kiwifruit and eat.

Kiwifruit is loaded in vitamin C, folate, vitamin E, and fiber. It’s the new apple.

When you’re finished, wipe your hands with the moist towelette that comes with the pack. They thought of everything: you have to love this obsessive-compulsive packaging.

The kiwifruit crop is still being harvested; they will be available in the Philippines in May.

Kiwifruit is originally from China. It was called gooseberries, which reminds me of the Chekhov story, Gooseberries. “In the evening, while we were having tea, the cook served a full plate of gooseberries. They weren’t bought, they were his own gooseberries, the first picked since the bushes were planted. Nikolai Ivanych laughed and gazed silently at the gooseberries for a moment with tears in his eyes—he couldn’t speak for excitement; then he put one berry in his mouth, glanced at me with the triumph of a child who has finally gotten his favorite toy, and said:

” ‘How delicious!’ ”

Thank you, Mr. Chekhov, there’s my segue to our Russian Lit Project. How’s your reading of The Brothers Karamazov coming along? I read the first 60 pages on the Manila-HK flight at a fast clip—certainly faster than Demons—but ran into a problem on the HK-Auckland flight.

My hardcover Everyman’s Library edition would not fit in the seat pocket.

It would have to stay under the seat, which was taken up by my tote bag, or share the chair, which was uncomfortable. So it went into my suitcase in the overhead bin. And then during the tour I put the book in my bag but with all the moving around it was just too heavy. In short, I didn’t read the Dostoevsky in NZ, but now that I’m home I will catch up.