7 May 2015 - The art of dabao-ing

In my family, we hardly get home cooked food. My mum picks Samuel from school every evening and then pick me from work. After that, the three of us will decide where to dabao dinner for everyone. Dabao means buying takeaways. It seems like an easy task, just settle on a place, and buy six takeaways and do it five days a week. Since we can't all eat chicken rice or wanton mee for every dinner, we need to think of different places to buy our dinner.  I told Samuel we are the dabao kings hahaha

When mum is feeling adventurous, we will drive to the coffeeshop at Siglap. Else, we will buy from the coffeeshop near her apartment. This coffeeshop is very small, there is a mixed vegetable (菜饭)stall - this word "mixed vegetable rice" never fails to amuse me, a chicken rice stall, a western food stall, a fish ball noodle stall, a tze char stall, a satay/Otah stall and of cos the drinks stall. Mum dislikes this coffeeshop because she thinks there is no variety. But whenever i suggest the hawker at bedok central, she nags that the carpark is horrible and it's a long walk blah blah but she will go because there is po piah for Jervis. I love buying food here because i can buy everyone's favourite food. Just that i have to queue a few different stalls. Queuing is a national past time..no?

Jervoise - eats most things as long as it's meat, no seafood, no vegetables, love fast food
Jervis - no carbo, nothing fried, not oily, not salty, anything healthy
Samuel - char siew rice, fish ball noodles, pork chop with rice, hor fun, fried rice, lor mai kai, bread, cheese burger, carborana pasta, char siew bao
Jfk - eats most things except spicy and no vegetables
Mum - see her mood
me - after catering to everyone else, depends on what i can eat at the coffeeshop

With the above criteria in mind, i need to decide on the best place to get what i need. Buying nasi lemak and chicken rice are no brainer choice because everyone gets the same thing. It's the mixed vegetable rice that is troublesome. I need to order 6 packets of rice and very quickly tell the stall owner what dishes for each packet to cater to individual taste.  Very quickly because usually at this time, there will be a long queue behind me, and the stall owner has a momentum of packing the dishes, i cannot break his momentum else it will slow him down.. and he will be annoyed. And i feel stressed at times, cos while i am glancing at the wide spread of food still deciding, he goes "ah 來" many times.  Tze char is easier cos i just need to decide on hor fun, fried rice or sing chow beehoon. So is Macdonald and Burger king.

I enjoy doing this some days, because dinner has been carefully selected with love.  Some days, i am so tired and dabao-ing seems like a chore. It's worst when i am not appreciated for buying dinner and i get the occasional complaints like "huh buy char siew again?" or "why you never say dunwan vegetable?" etc etc But i remind myself about how many 39-years-olds get to have their mums pick them from work and buy dinner together? And at 66, my mum is still able to drive her way around, that is a blessing.

That's the art of dabao-ing...from the dabao king lol