Dollar Thoughts

[2022]

Potluck Zine Issue 7: Snacks

My first memories of bubble tea gleam in fluorescent pink, greens and blues. Sweet Talk was one of the first bubble tea chains in Singapore - their iconic cherry logo, a team of middle-aged aunties, hot pink countertops, and is-this-safe-to-consume-? coloured beverages. (To this day, I have no idea what the ‘blue coral’ flavour is.) My sister and I would frequent our closest outlet after school so much that the aunties would recognize us and give us the ‘VIP’ treatment – a free pass to jump the queue. As a small and scrawny child, I would tip toe in desperate attempts to get a glimpse over the counter, eager to find out how the drinks were made. Becoming a bubble tea barista became a dream job, as the prospect of limitless milk tea and pearls was alluring to a ten-year-old – “I can have as many pearls as I want!!!!” As more players with better branding, quality, and customizability (don’t we all love the illusion of choice) popped up in the area, Sweet Talk eventually grew irrelevant. Despite this, the beverage remained a constant in my life, gaining new meaning and memories, especially through my teenage years - a bunch of clammy teenage girls waiting in line for bubble tea after dance practice whilst snacking on Taiwanese fried chicken.

[Side note: This is hands down the perfect snack pairing. The sweet, cold, milky beverage soothes the spice and heat from freshly fried chicken cutlet, dusted in chilli and plum powder. I always found a certain unspoken affection in the act of offering to buy someone a cup and knowing their go-to order.]

It was a dream come true when I landed a part-time job at a bubble tea store. It was such a big deal to me, and my young, naïve self was maybe too enthusiastic about telling people. It felt as though I had been led into a spy gang and gained access to top secret confidential recipes behind the nation’s most beloved beverage. Though overwhelmed by the number of recipes I had to memorise, it was fascinating learning how to brew teas and cook tapioca pearls as we rarely think about the labour that goes behind any product we purchase. Tapioca pearls take 40 minutes to simmer, and another 40 to steep. Different teas have different steeping durations and must be sieved multiple times. Sugar levels differ based on cup size and drinks, with each having slight variations.

Unfortunately, this fascination didn’t last. Every shift felt like a drag, and the fantasy crumbled to reveal the harsh realities of working (just like any other job). We were all mere ‘casual workers’ expected to work as robots, to run efficiently in the line of beverage production, churning out cup after cup, being shouted at when we didn’t perform up to standard.

At the beginnings of the lockdowns in 2020, government restrictions on the food and beverage sector unleashed hysteria amongst bubble tea fanatics. The night before stores would shut for two months, queues snaked outside shops with wait times of up to two hours, and videos of altercations between staff, delivery riders and customers started surfacing on social media. In a silent house drinking homemade brown sugar pearls with milk at 1am with my brother, I was glad I had been fired the month prior but couldn’t help but to sit in shock at the extent we go for the things we love. The harmless beverage festered into a manifestation of resentment that I avoided.

Moving away from home to a country where the bubble tea scene has just begun to flourish, finding a job at a ‘boba shop’ felt natural: what else can I do, when that’s the only thing I know how to do? The sensationalisation of the beverage was mildly perplexing, as I observed what was once a commodity in this almost past life of mine become a trend, a luxury. However, hearing customers with similar accents, and the occasional ‘are you Singaporean?’ I realised how a beverage can provide us with a sense of comfort and familiarity, a feeling of home.

And when I’m sitting in the back surrounded by boxes of pearls, creamers, teas, toppings, and other store inventories having my free drink of the day, I think about the hot pink countertops, and crave for the nostalgia of a shitty $1 pearl milk tea.