Called it love at (not exactly) first bite: I fall in love with curry / crispy puff six years ago when I first came to Singapore. While exterior appearance is similar to what we called ‘Pastel cake’ (which is also one of my favorite) , the extra spicy-ness that comes with curry and funny funny extra ingredients makes Singapore crispy puff a refreshing addition to my list of must-eat food. One of the shop where I regularly visit is Katong Rice Dumpling at Thomson Road (apparently they have a website here).

They sell a choice of chicken crispy puff and/or sardine crispy puff at $1.20 each (it used to be $1 last year thanks to inflation. Enough said: the crispy puff is good. I recommend you tried both chicken and sardine - preferably when they are still hot.  I usually patronize their shop just for this items before or after (and often both) I go for my regular mass at nearby Holy Spirit Church.

In any case, what tickled my common sense is the way they use plastic bag or stereofoam… generously. I am quite a simple person who never bother to separate sardine and chicken crispy puff into different container.

While waiting for 410 bus after Sunday mass today, I bought three chicken crispy puff - they have not yet cooked the sardine one. Knowing how difficult it is for a stereofoam to decompose, I kindly ask the uncle who cannot speak english (using my self learned english-chinese-tarzanese language of course), to use simpler plastic bag container instead of stereofoam. It is a lesser of two evil after all - at least in term of mass… so I thought.

To my disbelief, the uncle decided to put each of the crispy puff into different plastic bag. Mind that while the transparent plastic bag is not as big as IKEA plastic bag, I am 99% confident that it is enough for three crispy puff.

“Uncle, just put all those puff into the same plastic. I am ok with it” I said.

“(*@^%$#$#@%@$#@%&%&… its ok its ok” answered the generous uncle. Raising his palm to calm my concern.

At the end of my 2 minutes transaction, I handed over $3.60 to receive three crispy puff packed in three separate transparent plastic bags. To ease my burden of carrying those items, the uncle spontaneously put those items in a slightly bigger red plastic bag.

Despite the obvious lack of English speaking employees, surely the service at Katong Rice Dumpling is good. I am pleased with their service.

Nevertheless, I am not happy with the ignorance they show towards the usage of plastic bag. True that it may be their policy to serve only the best to customer but with all the recent green environmental conservation hype, it just made me feel guilty.

In case some you do not know (oh please), plastic is made from … OIL which is pretty much finite in supply. Furthermore, plastic cannot decompose easily - not in 500 years at least. Burning the material will only release a mixture of various toxic gases into the atmosphere, magnifying the problem even further.

I finished eating all the puff in less than 10 minutes before conveniently throwing all the plastic bags into nearby trash bin. The plastic bag is too small to be reused and I have plenty of spare plastic bag at home.