Drinking Eggs and Smelling Toasts

How many of us have heard the age old phrase, “When I was younger, we never had this/did this.” Every generation in Singapore has a completely different view of the country. Whether it’s made up of long houses and travelling rickshaws, or ktvs and Korean pop culture, our surroundings change constantly. What I experience now would probably be vastly different from the students in the primary school uniform today. Which is why, it makes my heart melt when there are some behaviours/traditions that we as a country still hold close to our everyday life. 

One of which is my ultimate favourite, and what I like to call, The Singapore Kopitiam Breakfast. It consists of your preferred morning choice of drink that has been beautifully juggled into a graceful dance, two delicately soft boiled eggs placed in a soup bowl and toasts sliced carefully and spread with a thin flavour of kaya. You get your fulfillment of both sweet and savoury while enjoying your cup of tea/coffee.

It’s a dance that we follow with dedication and delight. It’s a hobby, a job and a duty that we diligently upkeep. It’s a skill we are all born to do and no adaptation is involved. It is a natural instinct. You crack the eggs, drink the eggs, smell the toasts, savour the toasts and slowly appreciate the handmade drink. 

It is highly adaptable to your taste buds too, as you have your choice of pepper, soy sauce and other sauces to choose and use from. It is also highly relatable. It’s what brings the different generations together because we will all act out this performance with the same type of focus and devotion. And after all the hard work, it opens the space up and then we begin to share our stories.