One of the most irrirating things about Singapore is a practice known in local lingo as “Chopeing.” The practice is “chopeing” is an unofficial form of reserving spaces. This habit is most prominent in food courts and hawker centres where people “reserve” seats before going to buy food from one of the stalls in the centre. Unlike formal restaurants where the seats are the property of a single establishment, seats in a hawker centre or food court are common property and anyone can sit anywhere he or she choses to sit.
In practice, hawker stall seats are a free for all. However, a culture of “chopeing” has developed where all you need to do is to leave your business card or a packet of tissue paper on a seat and it’s effectively yours.
Personally, I hate it. It’s like, you have an hour for lunch, there’s only one place to eat and its filled with people. You get your food and there’s an empty seat – then all of a sudden, you see a business can or a packet of tissue paper and you’re left standing and looking for a place to sit again. I mean, who the heck reserves things with a packet of tissue paper? In places outside Singapore, a group will go out for lunch, leave one person to sit there and reserve the seats and then buy his or her stuff once the rest have come back. Only in Singapore does a packet of tissue paper count as reserving the seats.
Having said all of that, I respect the fact that you can “chope” your seats with something as biennial as a packet of tissues. This irritating habit is based on what of the things that makes Singapore a decent place to live in – safety.
To put things in a nut shell, if you saw a packet of tissues lying around in somewhere outside Singapore, you’d pick it up and use it and that’s just tissue paper. I’ve seen people reserve their seats with things like a set of headphones and today, I even saw something resembling a purse. Once again, if you saw a pair of headphones lying around, you wouldn’t think the place was reserved, you’d think that someone had left a pair of headphones behind for your taking.
Yet, and yet, this is Singapore and there are harsh penalties for crimes. Our crime rates for the most part are low and while you can say that this has made the population complacent, there’s a lot to be said for being able to leave your goods unattended in a public place and be confident that they’d still be there after taking a small walk.
In practice, hawker stall seats are a free for all. However, a culture of “chopeing” has developed where all you need to do is to leave your business card or a packet of tissue paper on a seat and it’s effectively yours.
Personally, I hate it. It’s like, you have an hour for lunch, there’s only one place to eat and its filled with people. You get your food and there’s an empty seat – then all of a sudden, you see a business can or a packet of tissue paper and you’re left standing and looking for a place to sit again. I mean, who the heck reserves things with a packet of tissue paper? In places outside Singapore, a group will go out for lunch, leave one person to sit there and reserve the seats and then buy his or her stuff once the rest have come back. Only in Singapore does a packet of tissue paper count as reserving the seats.
Having said all of that, I respect the fact that you can “chope” your seats with something as biennial as a packet of tissues. This irritating habit is based on what of the things that makes Singapore a decent place to live in – safety.
To put things in a nut shell, if you saw a packet of tissues lying around in somewhere outside Singapore, you’d pick it up and use it and that’s just tissue paper. I’ve seen people reserve their seats with things like a set of headphones and today, I even saw something resembling a purse. Once again, if you saw a pair of headphones lying around, you wouldn’t think the place was reserved, you’d think that someone had left a pair of headphones behind for your taking.
Yet, and yet, this is Singapore and there are harsh penalties for crimes. Our crime rates for the most part are low and while you can say that this has made the population complacent, there’s a lot to be said for being able to leave your goods unattended in a public place and be confident that they’d still be there after taking a small walk.
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