Had the most surreal experience yesterday lunching at the Takashimaya staff canteen. Just in case you don’t know (and I bet all my ten toe-nails that you don’t), there is actually a place in Takashimaya shopping centre (yes, Orchard) where you can get a decent meal (three dishes and rice) for less than $2.50 and a soft drink for less than a dollar (other than at Cold Storage) Ever wondered where the typical cleaning auntie gets her lunch? Ha! No, she doesn’t always ta pow from home! Hidden beneath the posh interiors and polished marble floorings of one of Singapore’s most “high-class” shopping centres, behind giant pots of artificial bonsai plants, away from the view of Prada swinging fashionable tai tais and expat ladies, is this very spartan, but cleanly scrubbed staff canteen (with cheap flourescent lighting, rows of grease-stained tables, bare walls, and plainly-tiled floors) which only the low-waged town workers (salesgirls, security guards, cleaners, waitresses and underpaid retail managers :p) know about… i practically had to weave my way through a maze of unmarked passageways, walk through doors that only read “Exit”, surreptitiously follow this guy in Cold Storage staff uniform, before finding this really surreal place that looks a complete world apart from where I just came from… strangely, I thought of the Victorian soup kitchens that Charles Dickens mentioned in his classics like Oliver Twist as I joined the proletariat masses for lunch… haha.. call me if you ever want to see this place.. it’s really amazing…

Stumbled upon this article “The Singapore adventure from 1996-1998” by this chap called Jochen Kern while randomly surfing the net. Get a dig of this sentence.. “This hotel was the champion on food cost which not fit in the frame of the lost paradise " Value for Money " concept”…. Huh?? Read more of his strangely worded account at http://cordonnoir.com/singapor.htm