I was at Peach Garden, a Chinese restaurant at Novena, for dinner today, and we were relishing the pre-meal peanuts, which were very well stewed, being consistently tender and flavourful.

Witnessing our enjoyment, the waitress stunned us by doing something never before seen in a Chinese restaurant (not by us that we could remember, at least) and asked us if she could get us some more peanuts.

Now, Chinese restaurants almost always have a mercenary attitude, charging customers for peanuts/pickles/whatever pre-meal snacks they have, tea/iced water and towels, so having such good and proactive service was indeed a real surprise.

Another surprising thing was that the waitress asked us this in proficient English, and not in the usual SACSAL tone too, but rather with the ease of a native speaker of the language. Yet, she seemed to be fluent in Mandarin as well, in her conversations with the PRC staff (Aside: Such establishments nowadays usually hire PRCs. Maybe they get tax credits for supporting our local workforce).

I guessed that she was waiting for her A level results, and was proven right in my assessment. I suppose this counts as going somewhat off the beaten path, as most people in that demographic stratum would rather be waitressing in yuppie joints.

It is so rare to find effectively billingual Chinese Singaporeans these days.


In other news, my Friday the 13th went well, except for my tripping on a wire, sending 2 decorative lamps to the floor during the Economics Society bazaar (at a cost of about $25 to me).

Ah well. No one uses those as real lamps anyway.