Was reminded by Pizza Amigo how Singapore is in serious danger of losing that right honourable place of being "cheap and good", or at least offering "value for money" for most things.
During one of the lunch time jaunts that I take by mrt-ing within the ERP zone, I wanted to pick up a something healthy(er) than the usual Nasi Padang type lunch, and so stopped by MIX at the Raffles City Marketplace.
Now, Mix, being something of an international franchise of healthy food choices, has exactly the same storefront and menu in Singapore as it does in Hong Kong - and that was where I basically derived lunch at least two or three times a week when I was living there. It had been almost 10 months since I had a Central lunch, and I automatically ordered a Tandoori Chicken Wrap and a Detoxifier juice (without booster shot). I don't quite remember how much I paid for the juice but did make a mental note that the wrap cost S$7.50 which was almost the same as what it would cost in Hong Kong at HK$35.
While eating my lunch back in the office, I had this slightly discomfiting feeling. Well, the food didn't taste exactly the same as it did in Hong Kong, which was mildly poignant in a vague sort of way (perhaps it reminded me that some of life's experiences could not be replicated exactly), but it dawned on me how insanely expensive things have become in Singapore.
Yes, I know that the wrap costs exactly the same here and in Hong Kong, but hey, we must surely talk about spending parity, no? It is a fact of life that income levels are substantially higher in Hong Kong than in Singapore, and a fact of life that few Singaporeans would be made conscious of until they worked in both places. For instance, a legal secretary can expect to earn an average of HK$20000 to HK$35,000 per month, and that's S$4,000 to S$8,000. Can a person earning an average of $1500 to $3000 here afford a healthy MIX wrap in the same way as her counterpart in Hong Kong?
Maybe MIX is targetting a different market segment here, but that could only mean one thing - the average Singaporean cannot expect to have the same standard of living as a person in Hong Kong because things have just gotten too expensive here without a corresponding rise in salary levels.
Its not something that the garmen want us to realize but eventually we all will feel it - once buying organic lactose free milk, tomatoes on the vine and low carb chicken wrap lunches become a not unreasonably expected way of life. Of course, someone will tell you that you can always eat $3 lor mee at Amoy Street, but then who's going to actually consume anything at the giant Vivocity and all the new fangled malls coming up in the next few years?
Please, don't tell me it will be the rich IR tourists from Hong Kong and elsewhere, or the next batch of IMF delegates.