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What routine?
It's the routine of experience, of
logic, of business survival and speed. A routine craft
long developed before Pentiums and 386 computers religiously
employ even today....recognition and association. That
cursory one second glimpse of you through the corner
of his eye to identify the one distinguished or characteristic
feature as you order, is all it takes. All within seconds.
And in Serangoon Rd, there is this
lady that shuffles little colourful plastic bricks as
she takes your order of fried hokkien noodles. If she
makes it look like child's play, it's because she has
a simple solution to an erratic and chaotic ordering
system. $3 to $5 for eat-in, $4 to $5 for take-aways.
Ten customers with different needs are served with each
huge wok of fried noodles. Red ones for eat-in and green
for take-aways. She will stack them for multiple orders,
line them up and remember whose is it. When the chef
is ready to dish it out from his wok individually, a
glance at the little plastic bricks lets him know what
comes first.
On the other end of the organised
order of chaos, there is plain chaos. At the superbly
popular midnight yong tau foo stall at block 115 in
Bukit Merah, the lady just won't remember your order.
She refuses to. You jostle to pick your items and leave
the bowl in a queue on a table in front of the stall.
Indicate your preference of soup or dry with or without
noodles here and she will howl at you. "Don't tell
me now, I won't remember one!" Her trick is primeval.
Every time she picks up an order from the queue, she
will holler "WHO'S?" If you recognise it to
be yours (with the cuttlefish sticking out), then dash
up to her and spill your desire "beehoon dry with
kang-kong"-- and it shall be diligently served
within 5 minutes. So your trick is to keep your view
glued on the table. Do not miss your turn, as you will
need more than a three-leaf clover to get back in the
impatient queue.
So the next time you order from your
favourite popular hawker, memorise these survival tips:
1. Quickly put on something
loud just before you order (like a luminous cap or blue
lipstick)
2. Know what you want well
in advance and on cue, bark your orders concisely at
the hawker ( the din of the frying wok and the meal
time crowd can be deafening)
3. Point to the direction
of where you will be sitting AS YOU ORDER!
4. ( read the next paragraph
first) In one deft action - confidently ordering your
food " $3 one bowl, only seafood dowan meat and
dowan rice" under the hood of a shocking red cap
with left hand raised and pointing to your seat and
right hand in his face with three fingers raised,...you
have given this search engine three precise commands
and request to deliver your order.
4. Your hawker, at the end
of the day, is HUMAN. Meaning : he will be bewitched
by your looks, stunned by the way you ordered and screw
up your serving.
With this enlightenment... just order
and wait.
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"Any day's worth of assignment was,
by unconscious default, a great excuse to
an hour's worth of eating adventure"
