Chinese (or Lunar) New Year in Singapore is a time where the country pretty much shuts down. From your favourite restaurants to shopping malls, the closure means that our non-Chinese brethren would have to do some stocking up, quite similar to how chipmunks would stock up nuts for the winter. Yeah, Lyn (my boo) and I caught Alvin and the Chipmunks a couple of days back and hence the analogy (don’t go all “oh you are so racist on me” please, this is a friendly blog…really).
Thinking back about my conversations with some non-Chinese and other expat friends of mine, Chinese New Year to them also mean two good back to back days of some well deserved rest. Of course this is especially if they are still in the lingering state of last year’s Christmas and New Year festivities.
Okay, I have a habit of digressing, now back to what I was getting at. Lyn and I yesterday popped over to Thomson Plaza after a nice lunch at Justin’s place to get ourselves a pipping hot cup of java. Perhaps the first time in a long while, I could not only witness scores of empty parking spaces, but got myself a very good slot to boot. What is normally a very bustling family shopping centre especially on the weekends, Thomson Plaza is extremely dead except for a few outlets like Watsons, Thai Express, Starbucks and NTUC finest.
Left and right: Entire stretch of shops closed
Left: Coffee was out of the question with Ya Kun closed | Right: Empty empty
Coming from a person who dreads heading to that mall for grocery shopping, I must admit that the empty atmosphere (or rather lack of) was rather refreshing. I could easily count the number of people at a spot with my fingers and it was extremely close to dead silence (okay maybe not that silent). This is also perhaps the first time I didn’t bump into anyone or had to make that quick decision to avoid one. Sure it may have a hint of surrealism, but I kinda liked it. Nice and quiet.
With most of the shops closed especially Ya Kun and given that we were not interested in Starbucks (or how we label it ‘Ang Mo kopi’), we popped over to NTUC Finest for a little walk around before making our purchases for things we really needed (we are on an austerity drive lately) and headed back home happy… 
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