Buzzing Around This Morning

Decided to be nice to the old folks on my roster and some of the friends'. So early morning, I went around Tiong Bahru market and its nearby shops to tapau some of their favorite stuff. It's a good sort of exercise- all these walking around in the heat. One could really burn off lots of energy doing this, and build arm muscles as the packs of food increase over the next 30 minutes.

Buying food for them can be a harrowing thing. I've been scolded by them for buying porridge, noodles, roast meats and the sorts from the 'wrong stalls' which don't do it as well as the other ones. They don't want large portions because they think it won't be as tasty as the regular portions which are perceived to be more balanced. Okaaaay. I always ignore them on the matter of lard. I'm not putting lard into the food, and requests for the cooks to use cooking oil instead of lard. The oldies swear they can taste the difference. Nonsense- they didn't taste the difference till after...... after I told them that I never put lard into their food.

It can be a painful exercise because I obviously wouldn't know which stalls are good at what. Had to spend some time trawling through food blogs to check out the supposed differences between the stalls, and make a gamble as to which ones the old folks prefer. By now, I know their individual quirks and can hazard a pretty good guess as to what to tapau for them.

Lugged the heavy bags over to the estates and heaved them onto the dining tables. Luckily I caught them before they started prepping for lunch. Most already had breakfast hours earlier. How on earth do they wake up at 5am or 6am daily? But okay. They go to bed by 10pm. So I guess it works out well enough. The oldies were extremely grouchy, and excited. I got a earful from them about the upcoming Presidential elections and the non-state funeral of a certain past President. I sipped my coffee and dutifully nodded at appropriate pauses. Oh boy, here we go again.