Yesterday I went downstairs to buy instant noodles  and had a surreal conversation with the provision store owner's wife.

I'd noticed that they had re-organised their wares both in & out of their shop. So being Miss Kay Poh  asked her what caused the revamp which I thought made the shop look more spacious and more organised. She was however not a pleased woman.

Immediately she launched into a complaint about THE government! Said that there are now new & stricter rulings which require shopkeepers all over Singapore not to clog up the space outside their shops and that all wares/stands displayed outside the shop must be moved into the shop when the store closed.

So I asked if it had to do with the 2 siblings who died in a shophouse fire recently. (The wares stored along the corridor of the shophouses made the fire worse and they died trying to escape from the blazing fire). And here comes the part that shocked me. She said :

"Just because of the 2 dead persons the whole of Singapore has to suffer!"  and "This is not the first time someone has died what!"

Woah!

I was so shocked I gaped at her and didn't hear the rest of her grumblings.

Amazing isn't it? Two people died in a shophouse fire due to neglience of the shopkeepers so the government stepped in & made sure that stricter rules were in place and enforced - for our safety.

But obviously shopkeepers all over the island are not happy as this has resulted in less display space for their wares which equals less sales and moolah! Who cares about safety? Who cares about lives that could be lose in more fires?

Like I said - talk about being self-centred. It's all about ME!  

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