Commoner's market

I was admiring the lovely white and lilac-coloured wild flowers outside the market entrance when I noticed the slogan "此大便者戒" (direct translation: people who poop here, stop doing that) painted in red on the fence. *faint*rolls eyes* hahahaha...

Vincent was unwilling to take the photo for me at first, but I sat there and refused to move till he did. After he took the shot, he gave me a sneaky smile (hokkien: arm-cheo) and said the shot was perfect because my fingers were pointing exactly to the slogans. LOL... XDDDDD.....

















Saturday (15/5) was the first time I went to check out a commoner's market. The market was extremely clean, cleaner than Singapore's dry market. Vegetables there were fresher and cheaper than the supermarket too. Haiz... silly me, I had been buying unfresh and uncheap vegetables from the supermarket for the past month... ><

BBQ on 2 May

Bozi invited us for an outdoor BBQ on this dried up river bed. 4 cars, 14 people, 6-11pm. Lots of food & drinks. Plus free fireworks display from people playing fireworks at some faraway place.



















Video clip:

Men outside IKEA

I had to go IKEA several times to get stuff for the new house. Everytime I alight from the cab, I see these stern-looking Men in Black (MIB) standing along the drop-off point. They don't look like they were there to welcome us (the customers). Neither were they there to protect the store against people stealing their goods as they are standing so far away from the store entrance. So what are they doing, standing there the whole day???


Finally, I picked up my courage to talk to one of the lesser fierce-looking guy.


AhMin: Big Brother*, why are so many of you standing here?
MIB gave me this expression (-___-*!)
MIB's answer: We are here to tackle those people behind you.

* I learnt that this respectful yet intimate way to address the Chinese would solicit a better response from them. Cos normally people will give I DUNNO as an answer.

















In this picture, there are seven MIBs back facing the camera, and 2-3 metres across the road another three men facing the camera. The men facing the camera are the people that IKEA MIBs are trying to "TACKLE".

Reason I can guess is the men on the other side of the road operate a private delivery service and are poaching the IKEA delivery business, so, in order to protect IKEA's business interest, they hired a bunch of guards to 'tackle' the problem.

End note, in my short 20 minute observation, no customer had been successfully poached by those men and no words or actions had been exchanged between the men standing on both sides of the road. So I'm wondering if it makes any business sense for these private delivery people to stand there waiting for customers the whole day, knowing that they will be stopped by the store's guards? Cos obviously, the money that IKEA earns is sufficient to hire those extra men to stand outside their store.