I’d be lost without the mobile ingterneck

When mem­bers of my fam­ily visit from far flung places, they under­stand­ably want to sam­ple foods from far flung places within Sin­ga­pore — like the best Hokkien Mee I know of.

So I went and drove to Beach Road, to the last place I bought Hokkien Mee from, and to my shock and hor­ror after bat­tling traf­fic for half an hour, found that they had con­verted the place to a steam­boat din­ner restau­rant because every other shop along the street was a steam­boat din­ner restaurant.

It’s known as Bub­ble Tea Fever, and for the pro­pri­etors of the new steam­boat din­ner restau­rant, may you pack up and regret a month after this, because that’s the dumb­est move you’ve ever made.

Any­way, unde­terred, I looked up the ingter­neck on my N78’s search inter­face, which is very neatly posi­tioned under all the other standby apps (good job, Nokia), and found that Kim’s Famous Fried Hokkien Mee still had their HQ over at Eunos. I noted the address and book­marked it in Nokia Maps, and set a course at Impulse Speed to the cor­ner of Jalan Eunos and Jalan Kechot.

While look­ing up the address for Kim’s, I stum­bled upon ieatishootipost’s post about Kim’s, and how the famously clad in office attire Hokkien Mee Man was rumoured to have sev­eral wives, and how he dis­ap­peared for a while in the 80s before reap­pear­ing all over the island.

There is his­tory in this Hokkien Mee. And when I got to the stall at Eunos (announced smugly by the female voice on the N78 — “turn left and after 100 metres, you have reached your des­ti­na­tion, and remem­ber, you couldn’t have done it with­out me”), I con­tin­ued read­ing and chuck­ling over the debunk­ing of the many myths sur­round­ing Mr Tan Kue Kim (the Hokkien Mee Man).

Then, a middle-aged man in long sleeved office attire appeared and shouted a few things to the staff at the stall before putting a Good Morn­ing Towel around his neck, pick­ing up a spat­ula to clang away at the wok. The Man was fry­ing my noo­dles. How cool was that?