I think many people fail to also consider that everybody has different eating speed. This only works if we somehow manage to program everyone to finish their food regardless of the type of food within a certain timeframe. If you are eating claypot rice slowly, and I have to wait for you for 15 minutes with my hot soup, doesn't make any sense.

Right from the beginning when people started doing the chope-ing thing, it wasn't because they were being stupid and the culture carried on till the present. Between preparing sufficient seats for yourself before buying perishable items like food and buying the food and hoping to find a seat, I think it's obvious which one is the better solution.

You booked and reserved a hotel room before you fly over to another country for holiday. It's safer than lugging your luggages around and only start looking for an available room by moving from hotels to hotel with your stuffs in tow.

And all in all, one person writing to the papers to complain about this doesn't make any sense at all.

If said person has a habit of eating solo, I'm sure the chope-ing thing should be the least of his concern because he can simply find a table with actual human beings on them and ask if the that random empty seat there is available.

Most people are more than happy to share their unused seats.

If he is writing this because his entire family couldn't find an empty un-choped table during lunch/dinner, then he better be fucking ok with his family members sitting separately at random tables across the entire hawker foodcourt/hawker centre.