Spontaneity, Sir? Let me check whether I can do that.....

Taking the lead from another popular blogger and also my Lady’s experiences, I wanted to draft a short blog on the lack of spontaneity that seems to have been bred into a lot of people on this small yet highly successful island.

While the education system has, by all accounts, followed the UK system teaching children to answer the questions in front of them for the purposes of passing a test (and has excellent results for that) it seems to have been at the expense of creative, out of the box thinking. And it’s not just me, it’s the press that think this (and ergo the Powers That Be: PTB) and also many taxi drivers...who are never short of comment.
A couple of examples that would lead me to believe that the educational requirements have bled into the everyday way of life are these that I have spotted or actually been required to conform with in the last couple of weeks.

Eat with your family day, sponsored by the National Family Council (www.nfc.org.sg). Indeed a whole family month; have breakfast, learn a sport together, take a picnic...how to family 101....can’t people do this on their own? I have even seen Singapore Family Sports day. Crikey!
I have seen emergency vehicles on several occasions with their lights flashing and sirens blaring, waiting patiently at traffic lights while the other traffic passes. Gosh knows what would happen if something unexpected happened...gosh knows what would happen to the people that called the emergency services should that vehicle not arrive.

Having said all this, after the incredible rigour around the retail banking system, I was opening a new account last week where the minimum deposit was S$1,000. I asked how I could pay that into the new account and whether I needed to go and get cash out my other account at a rival bank to do so. Oddly the gentleman serving me thought for a moment and said “How much would you like to deposit?” to which my initial response was “Nothing” but after some negotiation we settled on an arbitrary S$500. A little flexibility actually brightened my day up and left me S$500 better off!

While I’m here, I wanted to drop down a note on a good food establishment called ‘Fries with Everything’ on Joo Chiat Road.

It’s a novel concept and the owners aren’t even Belgian. An exceptionally plain and ascetic building, painted stark white concrete walls and floors mirrors the menu in its simplicity. Side orders apart, it’s a menu heavy on meaty things; cheese burger, lamb burger, chicken fillet, pork chop, beef steak and as the name suggests, everything comes with a portion of fries; shoestring or straight cut. Following up the very western theme come caesar salads, coleslaw and thick milkshakes.

We decided to eat here because the greeters were welcoming enough to come out to the street and talk to us, explaining how their steak is cooked and without pushing us to take a table. Nice, I like that.

Lady selected a lamb burger that was juicy with a hint of mint and a ricotta and roasted tomato relish and I took the char-grilled beef kurabi, slow cooked and so tender that my knife slid into the meat right through to the plate without any pressure being applied. It was sumptuous serving of beef and an absolute travesty to have served it with chips and coleslaw.

To be honest with a name like ‘Fries with Everything’ you’d expect to have some pretty good chippies, but unfortunately the fries were the worst part of the whole affair! Still for $40 (and the steak was half of that) it was a pretty reasonable dinner.

In comparison, here's some amphibian related algebra from the other end of Joo Chiat Road. 
I kid you not, a Vietnamese restaurant does a good line in frog.  But, if one frog and rice = S$8
and 2 frogs and rice plus 1 extra frog = S$16
and 4 frogs plus 2 rice plus 3 extra frogs costs S$30,
how much does one frog cost?


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