Quest for Chicken and Mattress

I've always thought that Christmas celebration in singapore is more of a secular and commercial celebration, like one event orchard road made use to earn more sales. And I didn't know that people in singapore actually have dinner with turkey until recently. As for myself and my family, we never really have a tradition for christmas, probably because we are not catholic-born. Some times we do have a family dinner, but we eat like sukiyaki instead of turkey =S.. I'm not sure they even have turkey in jakarta. Anyway, I'm not a big fan of turkey or ham or that sort. To me it's ok to celebrate it our own asian way, after all the most important thing is the christmas spirit in the family, right?

Well, this time round my sisters and cousins (all girls, can u imagine the dB level in my house now?) came over for holiday. We thought of having a christmas dinner, exchange gift, just a simple celebration. As we are too lazy to order a turkey, we ended up planning to buy some cold storage ready-made chicken and cooked some simple dishes like spaghetti and i guess that's all =S.. Anyway going to supermarket on christmas eve turns out to be a very bad idea... and getting a ready-made chicken on christmas day itself turns out to be worse =S.. How unexpected, I actually had to be an auntie queuing for chicken in cold-storage =S...there was actually a queue!! and the auntie told me the chickens are gone in minutes this morning =S....

U know what is more hilarious, chicken is not the only thing that people are crazy after, at least in Sengkang. Seahorse $40 foldable mattress can be a hot item too =S... We didn't have enough mattress in my house to contain 5 visitors u see so we need to get 1 extra mattress. Since last week, we have gone to seahorse shop 3 times, right on the day their new stock comes, only to find out that it is sold out. Do they give foldable mattress for christmas gift =S? I never know that.

I was curious enough to do some simple maths. First, on chicken. Sengkang population is about 140k (from wikipedia). Lets assume all christian families eat chicken/turkey for dinner and 14 % of singapore population are christian. So, assuming even distribution of christian all over singapore, we have, 14% of 140k people that is 19,600 christian in sengkang. Let say they form a family of 4, 1 chicken per family and let say only 1/5 of them decided to get ready-made cold storage chicken, so that accounts for 980 chickens. There are 2 branch of cold-storage around this area, so each has to provide 490 chickens. Well i guess, not everyone get their chicken on christmas day, most would have dinner on the eve so if 1/3 want to have chicken today that would mean 163.3 chicken for today. Cold storage roast about 30 chicken per batch (every 1.5 hours). That would mean they need 5 batches. When i came around 2pm i think it was probably the 3rd batch. Ok my assumptions and calculations are totally ridiculous but at least it kinda explains why i had to queue for chicken =S...

Now on mattress, i don't think people crave for mattress on christmas so let's assume sengkang population consists of families of 4. So there are 35000 families in sengkang. Let say every one out of 20 families need/ want to have a $40 seahorse mattress this holiday, somehow=S. So that would be 1750 mattresses =S. Seahorse stock comes 3 times a week, everytime 20 mattresses come according to a salesperson and again they are sold out in minutes =S. So 1750 / 60 mattresses per week, that would mean i have to wait 29 weeks =S if i'm so unlucky. Forget it, we'll sleep on the couch...

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone = )!!!!