Family Reunion

"Where do you find the best Char Kuay Teow?" Ann asked me, "and where do you find the best hokkien mee?" The answer? In two coffee shops a block apart. One coffee, at one end of a block in nearby Sungai Ara, has the best char kuay teow. Ever though the coffee shop also has hokkien mee and other vendors, most customers go there only for char kuay teow. The other coffee shop is at the other end of the same block, but only the hokkien mee is famous. They also have a char kuay teow stall, but nobody goes there purposely for that.

Well, that is interesting. We must try that. So, this Saturday morning find us there for the char kuay teow. This vendor has very good wok-hay. He lets the wok get real hot before putting in the cooking oil, waits for the oil to get real hot before throwing in the ingredients for stir frying. He is a consummate perfectionist.

Another thing I noticed about this vendor is that he is in no hurry. He refuse to mass produce the noodles. Only two orders maximum per stir-fry. We later ordered five bags of noodles to take home, and he makes two, two, then one bag to fill our order. Not all five orders at once like some other vendor may do. That is how he maintains the good wok-hay.

When the char kuay teow came out, it came occupying just one side of the plate. The vendor made no pretence of quantity. He did not try to smear the noodles all across the plate to make it look like it is a full plate of noodles. You get half a plate of quality noodles, take it or leave it. We took it, and we were glad we did. It was really that good.

After we ate the kuay teow noodles, we walked to the other shop for hokkien mee. We ordered our noodles and waited. While waiting, we comment on how odd the char kuay teow vendor stall
in this shop is not busy at all. No one ordered from this vendor. She was standing behind the wok looking bored. I think she should walk over and check out the other vendor and see how he does his noodles, and copycat it.

Siew Cheong and Sui Laun arrived around 1PM. After all the hellos and hugs, we settled down to eat the Dim Sum Siew Cheong had brought from Kuala Lumpur. Even after the long trip, the Dim Sum still looked good. The size of the dumplings are about twice of those from Ming Court in Ipoh (see Cameron trip on Monday.)
Siew Cheong brought shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, scallop dumplings, gluttonous rice wrapped in leaves, stuffed tofu, spareribs. We had a feast with these goodies.

Siew Cheong and Sui Laun were both very generous. They brought all kinds of gifts for everyone. Wine for Seng, Loon, Kai etc, cookies, roast ducks, model cars for the display case. There were blankets, towels as well. Sui Laun also brought a whole large bag of goodies.

After a quick rest, Ann, Seng and I went for a walk up the hill to the top of the development. I like walking up there. Some of the streets leading to the top of the hill can be quite steep, and in the hot weather here, I tend to sweat heavily. I like sweating, so by the time I come back, I will be drenched, and it feels good. I feel like I have cleansed myself. After a cool shower, and putting on some dry clothes, I feel pretty good. I try to walk everyday while I am here, to keep up the exercise. I miss bicycling the hilly roads of Mattapoisett. This is a good replacement for the bicycling.

At night, we had booked CRC (Chinese Recreation Club) seafood restaurant for a full course dinner. Since there are 14 of us, we took three cars from Sungai Ara. Seng led the way, but when we got there, Peter and Sui Fun had already arrived. Peter kindly told us there was one parking space left in the basement parking lot, and he showed Seng to the space. Sui Fun and I walked mom upstairs to our table.

Mom had originally said she was not coming with us. She complained that she needs to go to the ladies' room frequently. We persuaded her to change her mind. All seven of her children are here today, and I don't know when the last time we were all together in one place, probably more than 30 years ago, before Loon went to England, and then Kai went to U.S. for college. By the time they came back from college, I was either in Singapore's Nanyang University, or in grad school in the U.S. Once we started working, there was just no time when all of us were together.

This picture showed all of us, except for Loong2, who is the photographer.
In the back row, from left to right: Siew Kai (#2), Siew Mun (#3), Siew Seng (#7), Ann, Kean Ming, Hui Theng (Seng's wife, son, and doughter), and Siew Cheong (#5).
In the front row: Lilian, Siew Loon (#1), Mom, Sui Laun (#6), Sui Fun (#4), and Peter (Sui Fun's husband.) Everyone looked great.

During the last few days, we talked a lot about the old days when Dad was with us, and all of us living in the "Pigeon hut", a phrase people used to refer to the pre-war downtown houses we used to live in, and how we used to share everything. The fortunate child today does not know what it is like to share an orange 8-ways, for example. We laughed about the 'good' old days, our old friends, the things we used to do. It was great retelling the old stories.

Dinner was served banquet style. Two or three waitresses served us. The first course was "birds' nest soup with crabmeat." The waitress portioned out the big bowl of soup into smaller individual bowls at the side, then serves each of us with a cup each. The soup was full of crabmeat. The birds' nest is very subtle jelly-like things in the soup, and they do not add any flavor to the soup. This, I hear, is a very expensive dish. We normally do not see it in the restaurants, except for in banquets.

The next course is a course of four appetizers. There is a dish of scallops, a dish of seaweed biscuit, crab claws, and another dish, which I cannot ascertain, but it appears to be some kind of biscuits.