- fan tuan or rice roll
As usual, I’m a sucker for bargains. So on Tuesday evening when I wandered over to Square 2 at Novena to buy one of my favourite foods — rice rolls from a Taiwanese joint called QQ Rice– for dinner, I found myself buying two rolls and two drinks, instead of just two rolls! Paid $9 instead of $7.80, persuaded by the nice young server who said 60 cents for a drink of about 500ml was a bargain.
I thought so too at that point, charmed perhaps by the fact that he spread the black sesame seeds on the rice, just like he was buttering it. After I selected the fillings (there were about two dozen to choose from) — five varieties per roll — and he coaxed me to try yin-yang (ie two different kinds of rice) rolls, I went on to select the bargain drinks.
That’s when I went hmmm… because the juice of red rice drink wasn’t available. And that was what I was after. Instead there was just plain old jasmine tea flavoured with sweet plums and one other flavour.
That’s when I felt a bit pissed off and considered saying “forget the drinks; even free I don’t want, let alone pay $1.20 for something I don’t really want”.
But I felt it would be churlish to inflict my own generally poor frame of mind on the young man who was probably trying to improve sales for his boss and get into his good books. So I held my tongue and chose two tubs of plum flavour jasmine tea.
More annoyance was to come tho. After I paid my bill, the nice young man blythely told me to bring five receipts and get a free red rice pudding. Er? I twigged. A couple of days earlier I had bought one roll at $3.90 (no one at that time tempted me with throwing in a drink for 60 cents) and was given a receipt with the same instructions.
“Does it mean because I bought two sets, this counts as a receipt for two?”
“No,” replied the not-so-nice young man. Transaction’s made, so why waste further breath with this auntie, he probably was thinking.
Arrrgg! I could have kicked myself. I didn’t need the drinks, as I was heading home anyway where better stuff to drink could be found in the fridge and the store-room. I also needed just one roll, since one is enough for a meal.
So I had spent $9 when I need have spent just $3.90 and despite the difference in the value of the receipts, they were of the same value for redemption. I could have been one receipt closer to a free dessert if I split my purchases.
And it had all started when I was sick and tired of eating at the Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s food court. And wanted to give myself a treat with QQ-rice rolls. Instead, I got “tricked”. I’m a sucker all right!
The next person who tries to persuade me to go for a “set” to max value won’t find me biting so easily.
This said, I still think the QQ rice roll is far superior and better value for money than the Fitballs at 12 X 12 Cafe at Suntec. Sorry, lah, I got heartlander’s taste buds.
FOOD fuels me to talk... 