Finally! You have an off day tomorrow! This is what we will do:
There are two fishhead steamboat places along Jalan Sultan, one at the junction with North Bridge Road and another at the junction with Victoria Street. Both have the name of "Nan Hua Chang" on their signboards, but the former has the words "Ah Qiu" added behind its name (in brackets).
"Are they the same?" queried my bewildered sister.
"No," I answered.
"Are they different branches?"
"Not really," I said as I heard you chuckling. So I began to tell sis the story of Ah Qiu.
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The original Nan Hua Chang fishhead steamboat was started by Ah Qiu and his wife at Sims Avenue near Aljunied MRT station. We are not sure if the recipe of the flavourful soup was Ah Qiu's or his wife, but it was very popular. On an average night, patrons wait for about 45 minutes before they are served.
Unfortunately, Ah Qiu and his wife ended their marriage. Ah Qiu gave up Nan Hua Chang at Sims Avenue to his wife and attempted to start a new branch. He found a partner who was willing to support him financially and started another Nan Hua Chang at the junction of Jalan Sultan and Victoria Street.
Soon, the same flavourful soup at the new branch started attracting attention and business flourished.
Ah Qiu's partner decided to expand the business and opened another Nan Hua Chang branch at Jalan Besar. However, he did it without Ah Qiu's knowledge, likely without offering Ah Qiu a share in the new branch.
Ah Qiu was furious. But what was he to do? He was financially too weak to end the partnership. Yet, how could he continue to work with such a partner?
It seemed too much of a coincidence, but just when Ah Qiu was pondering about the future of his business, he struck the lottery. Now he was financially abled and he decided to break the partnership to start his own branch of Nan Hua Chang diagonally opposite to his partner's branch to challenge his partner.
Thus the Nan Hua Chang at the junction of Jalan Sultan and North Bridge Road came into existence. Ah Qiu added his own name to the now famous brand of "Nan Hua Chang" so as to differentiate it from the other branches.
With such direct competition, Ah Qiu's ex-partner soon gave up the branch at Jalan Besar.
And so it is today that there are three branches of Nan Hua Chang in Singapore, the original one at Sims Avenue and two later branches along Jalan Sultan.
We were having breakfast at Da Lian again.
Again the tissue lady came. We rejected her offer to buy her tissues by pointing to a packet of O'Darling 3-ply on your side of the table and she left.
"How did you manage to find this old brand? I haven't seen it for a while," I said, picking up the packet and studying it for a while. There was a starkness in the anime girl's face that I don't remember and the colours appeared deeper.
"I bought it off a man with one leg," you replied. "He looked really pitiful so I bought some packets from him."
"It looks different."
"Perhaps it's made in a different place now. Malaysia?"
For months and months, you've been working 7 days a week. Finally, you decided you needed a break. So on Thursday, we woke up at ten and lazed around till noon before making our way downstairs for brunch.
"What do you want to do today?" you asked.
"We could catch a movie with my Citibank rewards movie voucher, go shopping at Sim Lim Square or we could even go over to Johore," I suggested. Then looking at your overworked and haggard face, I added, "Or we could just stay home and watch TV."
"That sounds good," you agreed. "But I have a craving for laksa now."
You joined the queue at the Sungei Road Laksa stall while I picked a table and sat down. Soon you carried a tray with two bowls of laksa to the table. I thought the gravy was rather salty that day but without a pair chopsticks, I was forced to sip down some of the gravy in order to get at the noodle. You, on the other hand, were delighted to finally quench your craving and slurped at the gravy greedily.
Out of nowhere, a hand pushed 6 packets of tissue onto the table and a finger pointed to the one dollar change you obtained paying for the laksa.
Simultaneously, we both refused, telling the tissue lady to retrieve her packet tissues. This time, however, she was quite insistent and refused to move away until you told her that her tissue was unsuitable for our use several times.
"So apparently she has to work afternoons too," I said.
"She's getting desperate," you observed.
"Well, not desperate enough to stop smoking," I replied as the tissue lady lighted up another stick of cigarette.
Mom was elated because she had just found a new brand of sai-pia selling in the market.
"See," she said, pushing a carton to me. "They have not been sun-dried so they are very moist and succulent."
Mom wanted me to take some to you because she said you loved sai-pia too. I eyed the dried cakes of dark brown sweets with some disgust and replied reluctantly, "Okay, I'll take some over this weekend."
Later that evening, we had had dinner at the hawker centre near my house and were strolling around the market when I spotted the familiar dark brown cakes in the plastic carton.
"Your mother-in-law says you would like this," I told you pointing to the sai-pia.
"How much is it?" you asked.
"$1.50."
We were at Da Lian this morning. We both ordered mee kia dry and were waiting for our orders to come, you sipping your kopi-si-kosong and me my teh-si.
I was wondering aloud why the tissue lady was nowhere in sight. You replied that perhaps it was because she was sleeping late. "I don't remember seeing her the last few times we were here," I said as our noodles were being served.
As I was eating the piece of tur kwa in my mee kia dry, out of the corner of my eyes, I saw that the tissue lady has arrived.
A great bag of packet tissues was slung on her left arm as she strode towards Da Lian. The rising fumes from the lighted cigarette in her right hand mirrored her mass of grey, unkempt swirling hair.
She threw a few packets of her wares on our table and pointed to the fifty cent coin beside your wallet, the change you obtained paying for our kopi-si-kosong and teh-si.
Simultaneously, we both refused, telling her to retrieve her packet tissues.
"Fifty cents would have been enough to buy a stick of cigarette," you said.
"Really?" As a non-smoker, this was new information to me. I had always thought that the cost was nearer to a dollar.
"If she buys one of the cheaper brands," you explained.
I suggested that we have breakfast at the Da Lian bak chor mee stall beneath the Workers' Party headquarters at Syed Alwi Road*. The noodle isn't spectacular, but it's a nice change and it's good to break routines once in a while.
Some habits are hard to break though. You had your usual kopi-si-kosong and I my teh-si.
An old woman sat down at the next table and wondered aloud what she wanted to eat. In hokkien, she complained that everything was sianz [uninteresting].
You said, "Guess life is like that sometimes."
I didn't say anything. I was too busy searching for the pieces of tur kwa in my bak chor mee.
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* As ironic as it sounds, there IS a bak chor mee stall under the Workers' Party headquarters.
For the uninitiated, check out the mr brown show.
The typical consists of living apart for the entire work week. On friday nights, he picks me up together with all my marking load and we go to his place where I would stay for the weekend.
His current job requires him to be at the office seven days a week. I don't have to go back to school during the weekend, but then, I bring work back so technically I'm working a seven day week too.
Marking my students' work in his empty 3-room HDB flat can be rather lonely, but I am able to stay focused, usually completing what I set out to finish for the weekend. Sometimes, I think this arrangement helps me stay sane from the hectic life of a teacher in Singapore.
The atypical can be deceptively simple like a dinner on a Wednesday evening at the cheap steamboat buffet at Marina South. He loves it for the char siew while I target the live prawns and (when the live prawns have all been eaten) the frozen prawns.
