Save My Curry Laksa

Fellow KLites, we are facing a dire situation: our restaurant food quality is dipping at a record rate! Some 15 years ago, stall food were cheap and uber awesome. Not anymore. If nothing is being done to curb this calamity, we will soon see ourselves becoming Singapore ( sorry neighbors, but I have to honestly say food over at your place are anything but nice. Too healthy maybe).

My under-educated reasoning tells me these are the causes:

1. Perception of Standards
When in school students were asked what their ambitions were. Because the students were fairly young, their teachers would often give them suggestions. Doctor, lawyer, scientist, engineer, accountant, pilot. From there perceptions were sown into their young minds that these are the only respectable people to be. Parents who labor in foodstalls would also tell their kids to study hard for an office job that pays well and lets you sit in air-conditioned rooms all day long. Who can tell me that office jobs are easy? Do they also come with Dreams?

For people with parents still running a foodstall, consider the following:

Our parents were mostly minimally educated, and don't really know how to make money work for them. They know that you exchange sweat for honest amounts of money. Their calculations are very linear, how many hours of work equals how much income. You on the other hand are educated. What your parents have is more valuable than any salary-paying job out there. Oldtown White Coffee is a classic example.

In an employment you will never be able to reach the top of the ladder, because you will never own it. Don't be mistaken though, company share ownership only gives you the perception you own part of the company so you can work harder.

2. Taking It Easy
Look at all the foodstalls out there today. If they are bad, most probably they're manned by foreign workers. Honestly, I don't trust my Char Siew rice to a Vietnamese, no matter how good they are at Cantonese. Stall owners opt for foreign workers, mainly because of 2 reasons: they are cheap, and their own kids find it embarrasing to operate their stalls because it's got no class.

Its probably not lucrative if you only operate one stall, but what if you have a chain? Come on, if Ramlee can train business owners to make burgers consistent throughout the country, why can't chicken rice be consistent?

Matter of Protection
Foodstalls, in a way, represent a culture in Malaysia. A culture quickly losing its place, replaced by restaurants our parents say ' Con Ang Mos'. Now we are being conned into air-conditioned restaurants with comfy seats and cleaner appearance, and steeper prices and worse food.

Setup a strong union or organization. Provide proper trainings on clean food preperation, move them to better hawkers centers, allow them to plan for chains and franchises. Most importantly keep the secret recipes passing down generations and you will maintain the food quality. Setup a social networking site that will promote hawker food, allow the public to rate and comment so others can see and try.

I don't need to teach anyone how they can spend their RM50 million wisely. I only wish that i can still bring my kids Curry Laksa hunting like I did when I was younger. No not like Paparich or Madam Kwan kinda Con Ang Mo Curry Laksa.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Parliament of Crooks

Firstly I would like to apologise for not attaching an enticing photo with today's post. My computer crashed on me last week, and this stupid iPad does not allow me to upload anything online. Well then on to more pressing matters now, shall we.

Who are the ones actually making these margins all these while? Your bosses. Why was it that you have never felt the need to constantly ask for a raise? Because they give you a 10% raise once every 3 years and marginally increase your benefits once every 3 years to make you happy. 
Say for example you have superb insurance coverage provided by your employers, which they pay every month, and which you will add to your value because they are benefits. But have you asked yourself the important question When Will I Need It? The answer is after your retirement. The answer is after you leave the company. The answer is You Cannot Use It When You Actually Need It. 
Your bosses are actually only giving you the impression that your value is higher than your actual pay, but it is not. When it comes down to actual dollars and cents, your bosses are the only ones getting richer. 

Inflation is not an excuse for your bosses to not increase your pay. Inflation does not make money disappear into thin air. Inflation actually means your pay going up, but you also find that cost of living is also doing the same.

What do you do? If you plan to stay where you are and hope a strong union will bail you out of the situation, keep dreaming. The banking industry already have strong unions, and look at how silly the bankers have to suck up to their leaders just to move up in ranks. 

We need to change. We need to understand that we are worth more than what these fat bastards are paying us now. The government needs to protect us from foreign competition. When companies don't get to employ at the rate they're paying, and can't look into foreigners, they will eventually increase the pay. And when a new balance is reached, people will actually start to enjoy their work. 

But you will "Cheh" me and say "If Only It Was That Easy". I can tell you that as long as you don't believe, it will never happen. Who says life was easy? But it is worth being passionate about. 

The Cost of Benefits

Prices go up, all around us. 15 years ago we can afford a bowl of curry noodles for RM 2.50. Now it's easily RM 4.00. Everyone says its inflation, inflation and inflation. But do they know what inflation really is? To explain inflation, we will first forget about it, because inflation is only good when people are actually rich enough to inflate the prices of commodity around us.

So without inflation, where did the margin between RM 2.50 and RM 4.00 go? Some would go to the uncle/aunty making the noodles in the stalls. Some would also go to the people who made the noodles and curry powder. And also the people who rared the chicken and caught the prawns. Between year 1996 and 2011, cost of every bowl of noodles went up by an average of RM 1.50. By right everyone involved in producing the bowl of noodles and renting the stalls would have made more. But they are not. Shocking? This gets even worse in the corporate industries, where educated professionals enter the workforce getting paid peanuts. 15 years ago fresh graduates looking for marketing jobs get paid RM 1200 a month. Today they get, at most RM 1400.

Now lets factor in inflation. In the simplest terms, inflation actually equals the people's spending power. Given that goods and services are always scarce and limited, people's ever growing demands will drive prices up. When the people make more money, they will naturally be able to better afford goods that they demand. They will then pay a price higher than market rate in order to attain what they want, simply because they can now afford it. This is inflation.

But given that, for example, the price of a bowl of curry noodles is now almost 100% more expensive than it was 15 years ago, and that the monthly pay for an average Marketeer has gone up by a mere 20%, where did all the inflation come from?


I don't compare apples to oranges because on a greater scale, everything is inter-related. A market supplies goods and services as just that, and how much they are worth depends on how rich the people demanding them are.


Who makes all the money? Why is it that you couldn't see what was in front of your face all these while? Maybe there will be an answer to this next week.