Fruit Festival

Not long ago, I went to a fruit festival organized by the Jurong Resident’s Committee, where the guest of honour was the member-of-parliament of the Jurong Group Representative  Constituency. The fruit festival was held at an open area in Bukit Batok. I went to the fruit festival with my family and aunt, who had bought the tickets from her neighbor.

When reached the venue of the fruit festival, I immediately spotted huge basketfuls of durians on in a corner. Later, it was announced that each table (comprising of 10 people each) would receive 9 durians, of many different grades and species. Not only that, there would be mangosteens , rambutans and longans. I have always heard of durian as the ‘King of Fruits’ but it was at the festival that I heard my mother mention that mangosteen was the ‘Queen of Fruits’.  I had never known about this fact before the festival. My mother then further explained that it is regarded as the ‘Queen of Fruits’ because many people like to eat it, as well as people usually like to eat both durians and mangosteens together. When  I asked why, she said that many considered durians to be heaty, and thus something cooling must go with it in order to balance it out. A very popular choice then, is the mangosteen.

When we finally got the fruits, everyone immediately sucked their teeth into the durians. There were many different types of durians given, according to my mother, but I could only differentiate them using the colour of their ‘meat’. I greatly preffered the orange ‘meat’ over the yellow counterpart, because I felt the orange ‘meat’ was sweeter. Later on, I started to eat the mangosteens and longans. However, I did not really take a fancy for rambutans, which was what many others liked.

While I was eating a mangosteen, the Guest of Honour suddenly came around, and started talking to the people at my table,  and we all took a photo together. He did the same for all the other tables too. All the residents were all delighted when he came round their table. It must have been tough for him to go round over 60 tables and take photos with everyone of them!

I feel that it is good that he came down on such an event, because by doing so, he can interact with the residents and let the residents have some happy times with him, which may build their trust in him.