I stood in line at the noodle stall, tapping my foot
impatiently on the grimy tiled floor which was stained with at least a thousand
overlapping footprints. I glanced at my steel Casio watch. Eight thirty p.m., the
slim silver hands indicated on a background of deep Prussian blue. I had looked
around at the dinner options available at the food court – roast chicken rice, yong tau foo, pepper soup in black
claypots, mixed rice, kimchi noodles, Hainanese chicken chop – and none had
appealed to me. I finally settled on this stall, deciding to order some
steaming hot yellow Hokkien Mee to warm my rumbling tummy. This hawker never
failed to disappoint, serving up decent portions of noodles crammed with
crunchy bean sprouts, squid and prawns drenched in a decadent lard-infused
sauce. He would dish out the freshly-cooked food onto a fragrant brown Opei leaf and top it with a dash of spicy
sambal and half a tangy green lime.
It had been a long day at the hospital, with admissions
pouring in till five p.m. Then, we had stayed behind to finish off the
afternoon rounds, finally leaving the premises against a background of a
quickly darkening purple sky and the fading diffuse glow of the setting orange
sun. Briskly walking to the train station, I had then tapped my bulging wallet
containing my commuter card against the turnstile sensor, joining the throng
that jam-packed the trains after the long workday.
I heard the electric swoosh of the train arriving and
quickly sprinted down the escalator steps, squeezing past the motley crowd of
people at the platform and heaving a sigh of relief as the train doors slammed
shut just as I stepped into the air-conditioned carriage. I gripped the greasy
pole with my palm and dropped my beige canvas Coach bag at my feet, trying to
catch my breath. The carriage was full of salaried folk heading home from their
offices and workplaces like myself. Bleary-eyed, exhausted and sweaty with
an almost identical stony expression on their faces. Some flicked at screens on
their smartphones, some listened to muffled music through their earphones, a
few browsed serenely through magazines or newspapers, and many merely stared blankly
at the dark walls of the tunnel whizzing past.
The soft ‘ping’ of an incoming Whatsapp message brought me
back to the current moment. The young man ahead of me in the queue shifted
uneasily as he tapped on the screen of his iPhone, replying the message that he
had just received. He was in his mid-twenties, hair styled conservatively and
gelled tightly against his scalp with a few scattered acne scars marking his
cheeks. He wore an open-collared pale striped blue business shirt tucked into a
pair of neatly-ironed black slacks. He held his leather messenger bag tucked
under his elbow.
“Eh, leng zhai, yao chi shenme?” the hawker at the
counter, a ruddy middle-aged Chinese ‘uncle’ in a thin white T-shirt stretched
over his prosperous pot belly, gestured at the young man with his dripping
ladle. The young man looked up from his phone, paused for a few
seconds then raised his voice to drown out the clatter and chatter of the
bustling, fluorescent-lit food court.
“Char kuay teow – mai hum, mai taugeh, bu yao xia.
Oh, and no lap cheong as well,” he
hollered back.
Char kuay teow? No
cockles, no bean sprouts and no prawns? No Chinese sausages? What culinary
sacrilege was that? Was he ordering just noodles in dark soy sauce then?
Curiosity got the better of politeness. I gently tapped on
his shoulder. He turned around.
“Why ar? Like
that, what’s the point of ordering char kuay
teow?” I asked.
He looked at me with a sheepish grin, which somehow appeared
rather mournful yet comical to me.
“My girlfriend is very fussy,” he sighed.
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