Everything has a Place

 

I am currently in London for a conference, which my employer is sponsoring. One of the lucky perks of being on corporate travel, is that my accommodation has been special. I am currently staying in the WarrenHouse Hotel, which is a lovely Victorian Era property which was converted into a boutique hotel. You could say that Warren House is very much part of the England that I would happily move back to at a drop of a hat (which to the relief of an English solicitor I met, I am aware that this is not the only part of England – there’s a part I would rather avoid).

Whilst Warren House isn’t as “grand” as the Westin in Jakarta (where I stayed in an earlier corporate trip), its cozy and everything in well done. It’s the type of place that would be perfect for a wedding venue (not that I am wishing the kid to get married anytime soon). Facilities are decent and, given that I have a foodie website, food is good.

My first meal at the hotel, was a full English breakfast (which consist of eggs, beans, sausage, mushrooms, hash browns and fried bread). I mean, when you’re in England, it would be a sin not to have a “Full English Breakfast.”

Meal was served in an elegant plate. Everything was “just right.” Eggs were poached as per request, mushrooms and bacon were flavourful

This version of an English Breakfast was exquisite and in terms of the quality of food, it beat the full English Breakfast that I had nearly six-months back when I was in Margate for my sister’s wedding. This was my first real English Breakfast in 23-years and it in a “Greasy Spoon,” which was ironically owned by Turks. The food was, well, I guess, the very reason why certain places are known as “Greasy Spoons.”

I’ve actually made a TikTok video on the comparison between Warren House Full English Breakfast and the Greasy Spoon Breakfast:

https://www.tiktok.com/@tang.li0/video/7306660498836147464

 

 Whilst there was no comparison in which breakfast was of a better quality, there was something strangely appealing about the breakfast in the greasy spoon, which the nice hotel didn’t have.

Then, I realized it was the experience. Most of us are going to have the full English breakfast in a greasy spoon. Greasy spoons are places that create memories of a certain community. They are places that have their stories and places where communities come together. If I think about it, the word that I should have used, was refinement. Eating in a hotel was definitely more refined. However, was it necessarily better?

This comparison struck me because I am from Singapore where the world’s highest paid ministers have made comparisons between dishes made in luxury restaurants and in the hawker centre. If I am not wrong, the minister who used this analogy was trying to argue that you had to pay more for the minister because the minister was “better.”

The truth is this, we do may more for certain luxuries because luxuries are made of a certain quality. A Rolls Royce will always be several notches above a Proton Saga. You pay for the experience of being a Rolls.

However, that doesn’t mean the Proton saga is complete rubbish. Like the Greasy Spoon or a hawker centre, it has its place and for certain things its actually better than a Rolls.

So, when we look at things, we need to look at the entire picture. We need to understand that everything has a place and a market. The refined stuff may not necessarily be better at everything every purpose.

Let’s go back to my Full English Breakfast. The food was much better in the hotel. However, it didn’t bring a community together in the same way that the greasy spoon did. Both were the same dish but serving a different purpose.

So, when we look at people, let’s look beyond the superficial and talk about who is better based on how much they have or where they were born. Let’s look at their purpose just like we do between the hotel and the greasy spoon.