Exorbitant Pricing

Exorbitant Pricing

For a housing estate like Bishan, the community is well-served by the estate central shopping mall, Junction 8. My parents and I drove there for a normal week day dinner and instead of choosing to have it at the hawker centre (which we normally do), we went to the food court in the shopping mall. The last time I patroned it was many months ago? Because if I set off from my house for a dinner during the peak hours, I either need to pay 2 ERP gantries' worth of fees OR get caught in a huge jam leading from Thomson Road to Braddell Road. Not worth the effort.

To our surprise, the food court is lavishly renovated (I think the last renovation they had was barely a few years ago?), to the extent that the tables have orange lights! I'm actually afraid of strong lights and beams as they give me the feeling that I'm going to have a migraine. Reason being, before my every migraine, I would experience auras which kind of resembles the image one gets when he stares at strong light for a long time. I would call that my personal trauma. So sick of getting migraines.

Entering this food court is actually a little scary. Everyone's seated on every seat (plus the lights, urgh, irritating), I can't wait to get out, honestly. I asked Dad for money to go buy my dinner and he stashed into my outstretched palm a $5 note. More than enough, I thought.

I was wrong.

It took me 2 rounds around the food court to finally decide what I wanted to eat. There were only about 8 items that cost less than $5. Everything else was at least $5.50.

Chicken Rice Set: $6
Plain Roti Prata: $1.20
Teh Tarik: $1.70
Teh: $1.60 (So the difference between you tarik or not is ten cents =/)

What ever happened to the $2.50 era? I finally decided on a plate of seafood char kway teow. It's lablled seafood, with crabsticks (not seafood), fish cake (not seafood), green caixin (not seafood), loads of beansprouts (not seafood), kway teow and finally seafood,

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ONE PRAWN.


Oh I'm definitely going back there again in my dreams.