West end

Having been an east ender the last 16 years, the west is a totally new world for me. I did live here in the west before when I was little and lived with grandma. Coming to the west was a weekly thing before but now that I am here, there are a few things I have observed.

1. Grocery
I used to be a NTUC person. But now, I am a Cold Storage person. That means pricier groceries (gasp!) but much fresher products. It is true. I went to the NTUC at Bukit Timah Plaza (which by the way, was where my playschool was - Sherwood Towers). It was quite disappointing because the food there was hardly fresh and product range was rather limited.

Switch to Cold Storage. Tadah!! It is, by the way, Singapore's oldest supermarket chain. I LOVE the vegetable section. It is so...so..green! Being a veggie-lover, that section is such a joy. I must say that the Jelita Cold Storage veggie section, compared to the King Albert Park outlet is nicer and greener, in terms of the layout. An unhealthy obsession for the healthy food but really, that section makes me happy. Even the cold food section looks wonderful. Everything there looks fresher. Perhaps the grass is greener on the other side?

2. People profile
I am not being atas (high class) here but because of Cold Storage, even the people are different from the NTUC crowd. Definitely more expats and seemingly more affluent people in the supermarket. Afterall, the prices of things sold in Cold Storage are at least 10-20cents more expensive than NTUC. So maybe, it is a sign of the people profile. The normal aunty will complain about a 5cent difference that is higher. The happy aunty will buy in bulk when things are 10cents less - but frankly who is not auntified? We are all humans, from the east end and west end.

There is still much of the west that isn't like what I described. A big bulk of the west is in the Bukit Batok/Jurong area where the average Singaporean lives. There, it is NTUC and one huge Giant hypermart. Afterall, this isn't Monaco.