This might turn your appetite, so don’t continue reading (and looking at the pictures) if you haven’t had your lunch.

Or maybe you have a steely constitution, in which case, be my guest. I have a crazy imagination myself, so my mind tends to go to the most unappetising places.

Anyway, this was at Tiong Bahru Food Centre (or whatever you call it, the one where you have to take stairs up to).

I was having dinner with my friends. The Goonfather had ordered a plate of three png kuehs as a side dish.

(I don’t have a proper picture of it, but png kueh, which can be translated to English as rice cake, is the pink-coloured triangular-shaped kueh which you eat with sweet black sauce.)

Towards the end of our meal, as we happily ate and chatted, the Goonfather suddenly exclaimed, “EH! Why my png kueh got snail?!”

We all turned towards him. He was holding a tiny piece of rock and turning it around on his fingers suspiciously.

On closer inspection, it looked like some kind of shell.

Maybe it’s not a snail, exactly. It’s only a shell and, in any case, I think snail shells are smooth.

We just called it a baby snail at that time for convenience. But I have no idea what or whose shell it is, then. My knowledge of shell-dwelling life-forms is scant.

What I know is that it is quite a disgusting thing to suddenly find in your mouth while chewing your food.

It’s rather tiny, about the size of my index fingernail.

I think we all kind of lost our appetite after the Goonfather’s discovery. It was a good thing we were almost done with our food.

What I would like to know now is: What was it and how did it get into the png kueh?