The Parent and I celebrated The Birthdays a couple of weeks ago.
Our plans were impromptu.
We met, we discussed, we whittled down the choices to either fried spring chicken from this stall in this one coffee shop, or zichar from this other stall in this other coffee shop.
The zichar won.
Over at the coffee shop we had to make another decision whether to eat there or do a takeaway.
We did a takeaway.
Because there was this space near our block that was windy and spacious and which we could sit and eat and chat without the distraction of staff and other customers moving to and fro.
So we got our food, marched back to the space near our block and did this urban style of a supper picnic, laying out brochures as placemats, opening up the boxes and taking out the tissues.
First thing we ate was the salted fish rice.
Very delicious, nicely salted, not very oily- and in such a portion we did not expect until we dug deep into the box and realized just how high of a mountain each of us got.
That, too, was good.
You know how there are times when you get omelets with tiny oysters or which are really dry?
This one was neither.
Big- very well fried- and with lots of huge oysters tucked beneath the fluffy egg, we had a marvelous time hunting about the egg for the oysters and counting how many we'd eaten so that we could split them evenly.
(The Parent got an extra one)
After all this, there was still the box of black bean noodles.
This, we kept for last.
The dish reminded me of jajangmyun- which I think it might have been- except that this was the wet version with lots of gravy cooked Chinese wok hei style.
It was a good recommendation.
You got the flavor of the black beans, the noodles were thick and smooth, and their texture slurped up well with the rich, black gravy.
We hung about the area a little while more, crossed over to the late night grocery store near the town center, then went over to the canteen at the bus interchange to have mugs of (what I call) bus drivers' kopi.
Strong, sweet, stimulating, with a generous dose of condensed milk, this has to be one of the best kopis ever. I always get very awake after this kick of caffeine.
There're days where we have it with youtiao or hum chim pang or steamed tapioca cake or even a plate of fried kuay teow.
Today however we had it with kuehs- specially bought- from Kim Choo Kueh Chang- in lieu of birthday cake- and which I had been carefully carrying around.
The Parent chose the yellow one, I took the red one, and we both got a green one each. To our surprise having two glutinous rice kuehs at so early an hour made us feel somewhat full.
Looking at these pictures now I'm truly thankful.
Because it isn't about the meal, it isn't about where we had the meal, and it isn't about why we had the meal at this hour.
It was just us- Parent and Child- being together- celebrating an occasion together.
It was just us- being who we were and doing what we were doing- together.
That's really all that matters to me.