Sweet birthday noodles.

 

 

Roger Tay Today is my actual birthday. I would like to thank all relatives, colleagues and FB friends for all the good wishes. Once again thank you all and may God bless you all abundantly. My wife still stick to this age old tradition of sugar syrup, mee sua and eggs to celebrate my birthday. Thank you sui boh.

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  Ann Chin This is the first time since my grand pa's birthday that I had sweet noodles. What dialect group are you? We didn't have eggs, just a very very small bowl, and I didn't eat it. Thanks for memories.

  
  

  Ann Chin May I share your photo for my blog?
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  Roger Tay Ann, you can share, no problem.
  My father is Teochew and my mother is Hokkien/Nyonya..
  This sweet noodles with eggs has been a age old practice by my late mother since we were young. She passed this tradition to my wife, since then this has been practised on every birthdays.

  
  

  Ann Chin Hokkien/Nyonya? I wonder if anyone else does that. I am a Quang Ning Cantonese. I will write my blog and you will LOL.

  
  
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This photo posted by my Facebook Friend Roger Tay caught my attention. The sweet long strand noodles , less the eggs  brought me back to 1968. It was my Grandpa aka Ah Kung's 71 st birthday.  Mum made him a beautiful western butter cake. An Aunty made some paper cuts of auspicious words.

For breakfast, we had sweet noodles. It was symbolizing long life. I suppose long life for the birthday boy.  At 14, I didn't like sweet noodles, and I was in the kitchen about to throw the noodles into the bin we used to keep leftovers for the ducks and chicken.

I was caught red handed by an aunty. She said, "Ah Suet, you want to die." She quietly suggested that I give the noodles a quick rinse and dribble some soya sauce. I ate it feeling very guilty.

Fast forward to when I was 21, I left Sarawak in September to Canada. Grandpa was at the Sibu airport to say Goodbye.

Fast forward 4 months.  I was in my bedroom, when a flat mate shouted,
 " Your grandpa died?" He read the obituary from the Newspaper another flatmate had subscribe.

I was very upset, I whispered to Ah Kung. Did you punish me because I didn't eat your sweet noodles? Why couldn't you have died before I left or waited till I graduated?

Fast forward many years later to Father's 81st birthday.  The same aunty told my older sisters to cook the Foochow Noodles. It was a let down for me, I wanted to make it up by eating the sweet noodles.