Clean Up, Clear your trays

Spotted this interesting notice at Tampines IKEA while returning the food trays to the clearing station.

I wonder how many people stop, read and bring their food trays to the clearing station after meal. I could easily count with 10 fingers. The fact is most of us are groomed and grown not to clear the bowl, plates and tray from the table while having meal in the public. Maybe the act of doing so makes that person felt like a table cleaner/clearer, a job but a less desirable one in hawker center or kopitiam. It appear as a kinda stigma to some people.

From my days in Secondary School till now, I was taught and told to clear my tables after a meal both at home and in the public whenever possible. Possible mean when there is avenue to DIY and clean your meal area up for the next patron. A well design clearing station like those from IKEA or those dustbin with counter top found in MacDonald. This practice did not extend to hawker center because there is just no way you can do so.

Recently I am getting into a habit of keeping the tables at less clear and neat if returning the tray is not an option. No food debris on the table, no gravy or sauce shrewed all around, bowls and plates all neatly stacked up. Simply said, just keep it tidy after a meal instead of leaving a huge war of a mess as though diners had been throwing their food at each other across the table. If there is no table clearer available which is almost the case in busy hawker center or kopitiam, the next diner who sat down will definately do the plate shiftings and tissue manuvering to clean up whatever mess left over.

Besides been a tidy and considerate human being in the process. Does clearing your tables at the end of the meal translate to cost saving on the patrons? With the cheaper foreign labors and Ministry of Enviroment tougher sanitary stance post "Rojak" incident, most hawker center will stick to the status quo, keep their prices as it is and insist on hiring workers to clear the left overs instead of leaving the the chances to customers. By the way, if we all start clearing the tables, will we be causing the extinction of the table clearer/ cleaner job? Hmm... once an auntie scolded me for clearing the plates, saying that she will be out of job if I did so. Hmm... catch 22 situation.

Side track from the topic. Where can we find good and affordable western food? Aston that is and I recently patronized one located at the newly renovated Sembawang Shopping Center. Nice dining enviroment with a choice of indoor sitting and outdoor alfresco, asthetically appealing food, great on the taste buds, large generous portion of sides and the most important of all...the price. I am very surprise, for a restaurant...the price of the fare are just less than 5 dollars more than the kopitiam style western food. Not to mention the staff are well trained and offer good table to table service.



Cleared my assignments. Preparing, revising and awaiting the examination in November. I got lots of catch up to do over this few weeks. Good thing most lectures are over, freeing up my weekdays evening for revision and practises. For tonight, after hours of finalizing a certain lab report, i gonna read about Anne Frank... The Class95 morning express DJ recommend all teenage to read Ann Frank diary (now published as retail books). This book is a translation of her diary written between the age of 13 and till her last entry at 15 years old when she pass away during the Nazi German occupation of Netherland. I got this paragraph of her diary straight from Wikipedia. Makes me wanna pick up the book from the store. Always love a good read.

“	I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want! I know I can write ..., but it remains to be seen whether I really have talent ... And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can’t imagine living like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! ... I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?	”
—Anne Frank[