My Feel - Fraser Centrepoint Trust (FCT)

CAR STORY

Today had been a long day for accompanying my friend to service his car at Hyundai Servicing Centre at Alexandra Road (Tiong Bahru area). We reached at 10.30am and had to wait until 4pm to have his car serviced. According to him, every car must be serviced for every 10,000 km distance travelled. During the servicing, the administration rep would try to sell things saying "you need to change your battery" and stuffs like this. I don't recommend changing anything there other than doing basic servicing. Because the price is hiked due to it's award winning records and so on. Example: a shell engine oil could be bought at around $70 in public but it was sold $100+ there according to my friend (who brought to replace a better engine oil at $50+ through the internet so as not to purchase the overpriced Shell engine oil)

Since today, I couldn't help but I felt sympathy for car owners in Singapore because of the overpricing in COE, jams on the road during peak hours, having to pay ERP and still get jam, having to expend on periodical insurances, road taxes, parking fees, inspection fees, petrol, ad hoc repairs and servicing fees that may still have to wait half a day to get it serviced. I had to admit but I have plans to own a car in the future when I have a family.

MAIN TOPIC

During our wait, we walked to Anchor Point in motivation of finding Kale veggie for my juicing nutrition inside Cold Storage. Finally! I got Kale! Some more it was on a discount due to the expiry date I guess. It is very hard to find Kale over here due to it's scarcity and overloaded benefits (here). After that we walked around the shopping mall it was quite heart warming to see groups of family gathering at the atrium with an event where stage was set up for the Prom King and Prom Queen childrens were made to dress up like prince and princess to cat walk the stage, when crowd from every level are looking down cheering for them.

Fast forward ->

Finally, as my friend have gotten a Manhattan Fish Market 1-for-1 voucher when he paid his bills in the AXS machine. We went to Bedok Point to enjoy the benefit. It was nice, but I shouldn't talk too much about it because 'NPNT'. After dinner, we walked around the mall talking about which shop would continue staying in Bedok Point and which shop would close down as we noticed some of the stalls are really empty. Jon, my friend mentioned earlier that there were a few malls before Bedok Point closing down due to lack of human flow and that may be due to myth that, it is a bad location as he labelled it as "Ghost Mall". But I guess Bedok Point is now doing well since there's quite a decent human flow when it comes to food as Bedok Point has a majority of F&B tenants.

Guess what? We saw the old Sushi Tei closing down and the place is now being renovated for the opening of Saizeriya soon to come along with some Korean chicken restaurant beside it. Can't wait for Saizeriya to open as they sell some italian-western fusion food on a cheap price for a restaurant and the food are not too shabby as well.

Overall, I enjoy visiting malls managed by FCT than CMT. I didn't say that because I had sold my CMT shares. I just felt more homely and things are more organised by the managements. And somehow I feel that restaurants tenants there are generally more affordable than in other malls, not including the $10 bread shop.

What I Think

For a shopping mall, I think the most important thing is comfort. People like to go back to places that they feel comfortable with. Second is product/services, so on and so forth. I think FCT has done a great job. I have confidence that it will grow further independently, despite not being a blue chip with government backing.

What do you think?