- Rare social commentary -

I blog today in an irate manner, having been rubbed the wrong way while in an irritable mood born of sleep deprivation.

I picked up my lunch from KFC today, fully intending to join my colleagues back at the office before catching a quick lunchtime nap, the labours of intense hand-waving last night at Kim Seng Road taking their toll on me. I was, however, waylaid by other interns as I was making my way back to the office, and under extreme duress I found myself succumbing to their insistence that I join them for lunch, my past absences at their lunch jaunts apparently having incurred their annoyance (I exaggerate a little, but in my defence, a lack of sleep nulls the brain).

I followed them thus to Kosma food court in the basement of Peninsula Plaza, 2 buildings away from our common workplace and guarded the table as they made their orders. I had just begun picking at my cheese fries when an, officious, self-important prick came up to me waving his hand, but not in the manner of one who has recognised a long-lost, thrice-removed cousin. His wave was accompanied by a "Sir you cannot eat owside foot heer."

But I'm with 5 of my friends, I reasoned, and they're all customers of the food court.
"Still, is the same. Yar not suppose to eat owside foot heer."
He proceeded to stare at me, albeit from a distance, but he maintained a watchful, almost reproachful, and (or so he hoped) intimidating gaze in my direction.
So what was I to do, sit there and watch them eat while I starved? Observe the way their larynxes rose and fell in near-unison as they savoured the food deemed acceptable at the food court while my choice of lunch seemed to desecrate the hallowed, yellow, peeling walls and the uncleaned-in-3-days floors of the food court, the tables of which had evidently seen a lot of laksa-spillage in the 5 hours since they were last haphazardly cleaned? I was unworthy.
I hope it is understood that I rant here not about the cleanliness of the venue, which I honestly couldn't care less about.
Are we such an inflexible society today that one person cannot join a large group of his friends in consuming food purchased from another location?

It got worse.

When the other 5 came back and began to eat, I figured it was only logical that I should join them in eating. So I began picking at my fries once again, and before I could so much as stick one in my mouth, Pricky had returned, and this time he'd sidled up to me noiselessly, before launching into a "Sir, I hope you unnerstan, you cannot eat owside foot heer."
The effort must have tired him out.

Clearly I was allowed to sit there with my friends and take up space, my friends slurping away at their wanton mees wantonly. Yet, since the sign said that consumption of outside food was prohibited (well, they put it rather less elegantly, but that was the idea nonetheless), I could have my food in front of me, as long as I shouldn't have the audacity to even think about eating it.

A few of the others raised their objections to the absolute ridiculousness of the situation.
They decried his deplorable intransigence.
Emboldened by this power in numbers, the girl opposite me did the unthinkable: she tried to reason with him.
"It's just one of us not eating from here, the rest of us bought food what."
To which Pricky replied with a sneer, "You try and bring our food to KFC and see they let you eat or not?"
"I'm sure they would." I was enraged by his condescending tone.
"You so swer? I use to work in fass foot, you know?"
No wonder, then, that you're so self-important now. The step up from fast food boy to food court status evidently went to your head.

It is heartening to see that we have progressed as a society to one so open and flexible, where the rigidity that typified the Singapore of yesterday has dissipated, and in its place understanding and case-by-case analysis now rule.
The millions invested in Courtesy campaigns with a smiling Prof Tommy Koh helping little old ladies cross the road have also paid off, their fruits manifesting themselves as the attitudes of food court attendants islandwide. It brings much cheer to know that all our efforts to improve civil society have not gone to waste.