Sh**

Office was really quiet last week when most of my colleagues weren't around. Don't worry, we weren't the victims who had taken The chocolate cake from Prima Deli, we only took its durian cake. Most of my colleagues were happily holidaying overseas & I was also busy with the upcoming event this Sat. And all thanks to my colleague who probably has the 6th sense not to order our usual favourite chocolate cake for the birthday celebration for this round.

Now most of them are back finally & I'm more alive again with lunch time talks although the topic is on...well, shit.

I wonder how Prima's gona regain consumers' confidence after this fiasco. It's been one of my favourite brand as its cakes are soft & moist with reasonable prices & is also the 'official cake' for our office's birthday celebrations. During my sec school days, I used to patronise the shop frequently with my friends where we'd munch their chicken pies or tuna puffs after school. A couple of months back, I was also addicted to the Belgium Choc Cake (with rum),but it went off the shelf when it was certified Halal. Fortunately.

My colleagues suggested having a 1-for-1 promotion to attract customers. One even suggested giving a $2 incentive for those who eat their cakes as a show of confidence. Whatever it is, it's gonna take quite a while for people to forget. Being awarded an "A" rating for a clean & hygenic food handling facility by NEA, I wonder the standards of this certification. If it can happen to Prima Deli, who is a big player, it can happen to anyone.

Don't we sometimes rely too heavily on these so-called accreditation, certification from the 'relevant authorities' that sometimes, we don't realise that they are afterall, just procedures & a lot depends on the co. in ensuring strict adherence or sometimes, just simple personal hygiene habits of the food handlers. Apparently one of the carriers came from the place where our ancestors came from.

I see or rather, hear them everywhere. In trains, at retail outlets, stalls of food courts or other food outlets, along the streets and even childcare centres. With the spate of food scares from that place, my hubby & I have since stopped buying products, particularly food products that's MIC if we can help it. We no longer store Maling cans or pork cubes or even toothpaste.

The price to pay for turning to cheap stuff.

I'm not saying that cheap is no good but there should always be a baseline & I do believe sometimes what you pay is what you get. But having heard the scupulous things they do to earn a living, that's not gonna earn my respect for them seriously.
They have a long way to go & I shudder at the thought of them becoming the next big brother.

Of course, there are also others who are just beyond our imagination the things they do. One was blowing her that part of her 'hair' after finishing her hot spring dip; another I heard was disinfecting the gym equipment before he uses & yet, not using the towel provided by the gym whilst he uses the machine; another was blowing his socks dry after his shower in the gym.

One tip I've learnt today is never sit in front of the hawker stall that you bought your food from. One of my colleague saw an hokkien mee stall holder spitting into the bin that was placed from his wok away. He must have been trained by some shifu to be able to master the skill of spitting over the wok of hokkien mee & right into the bin. Perhaps he can consider entering into the Guiness World of Record for the world's most accurate spit-shooter.

Come to think of it, we seem to live a life full of shit. We kena the shitty work, some unlucky ones kena shitty bosses (luckily not for my dept), if we make mistakes, we get into deep shit and now, we may have eaten someone else's shit without knowing...Life is like a box of chocolate, you'll never know which one will have the shit in it.

*Pardon my language here. Too much of it during our lunch talk today.