I can't help but notice that the Uncle selling Kueh Tu Tu is the same man who has been selling the traditional kueh since i was probably still in my primary school days a decade ago. Surprisingly, given what i can recall of him when i was still a kid, he seems not to have aged very much, unlike most other hawkers who have been pedalling their trade for many years. He could be in his early fifties, though years of standing for long periods of time each day have not made him any less weary or shrunken. Instead, he exhibits a certain kind of resilience and sturdiness - qualities necessary for a job that requires one to stand for long hours and ceaselessly make hot piping kueh out of very basic tools and ingredients. (For the record, kueh tu tu - either a peranakan or indonesian delight, i ain't sure - is a simple kueh made of flour containing either coconut paste or peanuts as its filling. It is steamed and served on a small pandan leaf.)
It is all the more impressive that he alone has been making the kueh all these years. Though of course i don't sit down at the hawker centre and observe him for hours, i wonder if he ever has time for a break when he starts making and selling the kueh from late afternoon to night each day. The small ones are sold at 3 for a dollar and i must say they are very delicious. While you don't see a queue snaking from the front of the store, there are always people buying from him. Usually, people would wait at the empty tables or stand around the stall.
I found myself doing just that yesterday, having decided that the plate of bland nasi goreng i had for my late lunch was inadequate and unsatisfying. Quite ashamed of myself, i have to confess that i have not patronised his stall for as long as i can remember. It has always been my parents or someone else who buy the kueh; all i have to do is to stretch my hands and grab it. Anyhow, i waited quietly around as i tried to figure the system of making orders. Although there is no formal way of queuing and placing your orders, customers are hardly bothered by that. This is probably because such unspoken rules are recognised and acknowledged, and people generally wait for their turn to order. Besides, no one can begrudge the Uncle who alone takes orders, collects money and at the same time makes the kueh and steams them. If there's any complaint, it is ultimately assauged by the appreciation shown this polite and stoic hawker. At any rate, people who buy from him are probably long-time customers who understand too well how the system works.
Like other people who were standing around waiting for their food, i did what most other people appeared to be doing: observe and appreciate how the Uncle manages to run everything by himself. As with other veteran masters of their trades, this Uncle is no different in that his consummate skills and years of experience show in the way he manages every detail of his business. To make the kueh, he would fill a metallic cup with plenty of flour, followed by either peanut or coconut paste as the inner filling before covering it up with more flour. The metallic cup is able to hold just three small kueh. This would then be placed on the steam machine (next to the table which he does all the preparation) to replace another one in which the kueh would by now be cooked. At any one time, the steam machine - designed especially for making kueh tu tu - can hold only two metallic cups - the equivalent of 6 small kueh. And while the kueh are being steamed, the Uncle is either preparing for a new batch of kueh ready to replace them, or he would be packing the cooked ones for the customers and collecting money from them. He also arranges the kueh according to their filling - though it amazes me how he remembers which is which, since the final product all look the same, not to mention that there are surely many things in his mind as he carries out all the said tasks over and again.
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A secondary school teacher once told me that she prefers to eat at hawker centres over food courts and restaruants because she feels that the former offers you food that is more genuine. I have always liked eating at hawker centres, however dingy or uncomfortable some may be, because they offer a gamut of delectable local delights and don't burn a big hole in your pocket. Restaurants are fine only if i can afford the costly meals.
But hawker centres offer much more than just great and cheap food: they give you a slice of local life, of what it means to be earning a humble and, many a time, hard living in a city that is increasingly recognised more for its cosmopolitan and global aspirations. This is the impression and genuine feelings evoked whenever i visit a hawker centre, and they are totally different from the experience i get when eating in restaurants. In addition to the doubtlessly necessary fault-finding with the often terrible and dismal service at many restaurants here in Singapore, eating at restaurants and upmarket eating places, while being able to enjoy a cozy setting, has a somewhat more artificial and detached facet that accompanies the experience.
I recognise the unfairness in my assessment because, indeed, eating at hawker centres and restaurants are supposed to offer vastly different experiences. Food courts offer patrons the comfort of eating in an air-conditioned and generally clean environment, while people who dine at restaurants are willing to part with more money in exchange for good service (which is not always present), famous cuisine - offered only at such places - as well as ambience and other aesthetic qualities and practical concerns (social gatherings, for instance, would be better conducted in restaurants rather than hawker centres).
Yet it is precisely for the above reasons that all but render eating at restaurants and food courts a comparatively less genuine and heartfelt experience. The authentic cuisines and occasional impeccably polite waiter or waitress aside, a food court or restaurant experience simply fails to provide the rich, vibrant and interactive conditions that their humble brethren affords. It is a structural fault, so to speak, because such is the difference between eating at local food centres, tucked away in the midst of the Singapore heartlands, and fine restaurants and ubiquitous food courts.
Eating at the stuffier hawker centre whose air is saturated with smoke and a potent concoction of smells emanating from char kuay teow and fried western food to grilled sambal fish, among others, there are infinitely more sights and sounds and smells that enrich your experience. If you enjoyed the food but regret that your clothes now reek of oil and fried smell, remember the hawkers who stand for hours on end preparing those food. And remember that the food costs much less than what you would expect at other places. Take also a closer look at the hawkers, such as the Kueh Tu Tu Uncle, and appreciate that what you are seeing might well be a dying trade. While some hawkers are rude and some put on an invariably forlorn look, there are also others who are enthusiastically friendly and loquacious, chatting you up and sharing stories more than you are interested to hear from them. The sugarcane drink Auntie spots you from faraway and yells in her clear prominent voice to direct you to empty seats, faster than you could reject her well-rehearsed lines that are repeated tirelessly hundreds of times everyday. Then there are so many of them vying for your attention that you find them loathsome; but what more can one expect from these people who depend on selling as many cups of sugar canes as they can to pay rents and earn a living? You also witness ugly and kind Singaporeans alike in action, from those who jump queues or litter, to those who make space to share the table with you and those who despite not needing another packet of tissue yet are still willing to buy from the old lady who leads a blind man and sells tissue paper from table to table.
Above and over all that, while not many would regard such experiences appealing or relevant to the subject of eating a meal, these occurrences, sightings and experiences at hawker centres are as genuine as the food you get at these places. Food courts and restaurants precisely seek to reduce discomfort and efface many of the unpleasant conditions (like unbearable heat, dirtiness, noise etc) accompanying eating at hawker centres. And in so doing they remove the natural chaos and abundant opportunities for one to appreciate and immerse in a more authentic local setting - because in place of all the conditions present at hawker centres, what one gets while eating in a restaurant or food court is a sense of a somewhat manufactured social setting and interactions that are marred by a certain degree of pretense and enforced social order that lacks human empathy.
The Kueh Tu Tu Uncle could well be putting on a disguise when he dons his apron and churns out delicious kueh after kueh. But i find it hard not to be moved by his dilligence and dedication in a very humble business that, by most measures, makes very modest earnings. And it is perhaps this certain empathy evoked that has me find resonance with the less glamourous aspects in life.
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