Hup Soon Porridge

Saturday, 23 June 2012 - For many, many years, since I was a child, my family used to go to this stall at Tekka Centre in Little India that sold a truly delicious pork porridge. We would go on Saturday mornings, for breakfast. I don't know what it was that made the porridge so good. Generous servings of pork liver and pork balls. A raw egg mixed in. The porridge itself was so umami, so flavourful I would gladly eat it plain, and sometimes did, finishing the pork first, and saving half a bowl's worth of rice porridge to savour all on its own.

As I grew up it began to get harder and harder to make time to go. We had things to do, commitments to meet. We would still go, just a lot less frequently. As the years go by I grew increasingly aware the the stall's days were numbered. The people who ran it were growing older, and there was nobody younger taking their place. And of course in Singapore, there's always rent, and other costs of running a small F&B business, always increasing, far outpacing what people will pay. And so each visit gew increasingly urgent, knowing it might be the last. One time the stall actually closed. We arrived at Tekka to find the shutters unexpectedly down. But that turned out to be temporary. Some personal matter the owners had to see to. They were back in a few months. We were so relieved.

It's gone now, for good. I didn't find out myself. Somebody told me. I'm surprised how little I grieved for it. Maybe those years of dreading its loss prepared me adequately for when the loss actually came.

Nothing lasts forever. Everything you love will one day go away. You have to make peace with that, don't you? And be grateful for things while you have them.