Claire Kuo : Singing for her supper

Diners at Newton Food Centre did not give the pixie-faced girl in a simple white T-shirt and blue jeans who walked in a second glance - until a photographer started snapping away as she studied the menu.

They then paused briefly from tucking into their food to look at her, figuring that she was some kind of celebrity.

Most probably did not realise it but the pretty, unassuming girl was, in fact, rising Taiwanese starlet Claire Kuo Jing, who was at the food centre two weeks ago. She was here for a four-day visit which included two performances.

The visit was the singer's second there. She had eaten at Newton once during an earlier trip to Singapore.

'I like the variety of food here,' she said as she rattled off her food choices to her local minders.

The single 27-year-old had asked to have supper after a busy evening that started with a 7.30pm performance at the Nanyang Technological University, where about 1,000 students - with schoolbags and files in tow - watched the doe-eyed beauty perform.

Strutting around the audience and shaking hands, she sure made many of her fans happy that night. Not least of all the one excited fan who shouted out in Mandarin: 'Kuo Jing, you will forever be our sparrow' - in reference to one of her song titles.

An autograph session followed the hour-long performance, before she headed off in a minibus for an interview with Radio 1003 in Singapore Press Holdings' Toa Payoh North building.

Job done, it was then time to settle down for a satisfying meal.

'I felt the campus concert was a success, the students were very warm. I had thought they would have been quiet,' Kuo commented at Newton Food Centre as she brushed chilli off barbecued stingray with her chopsticks.

It seems the soft-spoken girl likes local food but she can't take anything too spicy.

Her big round eyes surveyed the array of food before her - fried clams, satay, popiah, fried vegetables, deep-fried baby squid and fried hokkien mee, before she curiously tried each in turn. She later revealed that the barbecued stingray and the deep-fried baby squid were her favourites.

Every now and then, she would occasionally turn around to look at a blind busker who was belting out English, Mandarin and Hokkien songs nearby, and sway along to his music.

'That's Ai Pia Jia Eh Yia (Must Fight Then Can Win),' she said when the elderly busker started singing the familiar Hokkien song, before turning her attention to the food again.

Midway through the meal, the petite Kuo milked her Thai coconut dry which she had earlier rejected for a bigger local one for. Obviously, this girl knows her food, as Thai coconuts are known to be sweeter.

Hopping back on the minibus to her hotel - the Conrad Centennial Singapore - shortly after 11pm, she slumped in her seat and seemed drained.

'I always go back around this time, I'm not the kind who parties late,' she said.

But as Marina Square came into sight, talk of shopping in designer boutique Prada the next morning pepped her up a little.

The pint-sized girl displayed the same friendliness as she had at the concert when a handful of fans swarmed around as she alighted at the hotel entrance.

Her long day ended after midnight, but not before performing a little routine - tapping on her hotel room door before opening it with her keycard.

'There's no one inside. It's just a superstitious Taiwanese custom to alert any 'ghosts' of my entrance,' she explained.

Well, spirits or not, the modest singer was not going to be kept from TV and sleep, not when she had another day of interviews and a show looming.