all in the name

chickenwu2.jpg
our friend, wings - image remixed by J

Last night, the Jacky Wu lookalike who makes the world's best BBQ chicken wings sat down beside us at the hawker centre and suggested that we exchange phone numbers.

*exchange in mandarin
BBQ: Give me your number.
J: Why?
BBQ: When I run out of chicken wings or what, I can call you, warn you not to come down. Like today.
J: Oh yah, good idea!
BBQ: [looking at what J has wrote] Eh, I don't know English leh.
J: No lah, it's very easy, Jam.
BBQ: Ohr, JAM. Aiyah, your name, like the thing you spread on bread.

(He grins, showing a missing tooth and three more badly chipped teeth. Tearing off another little slip of paper, he writes his phone number and scribbles an English word under it.)

BBQ: Wings.
J: Huh? Really meh? Your name, wings?
BBQ: Yah, my name. [Smiles] Wings - so everytime I also win.

And Friends, this is why he makes the world's best BBQ wings. It's all in the name.

Comments

orangeclouds said…
Aiyoh, I lurve your blog. Trying to get some T-shirt action too, altho the pix are taking quite long to download. Mind if I put a link on my blog to yours?
2:40 pm
ampulets said…
On! I was also about to ask you about adding a link to your blog too. Can yah?

Oooh, let me know about the Ts :> We are putting out a new design in Nov (fingers crossed).

Seeya when you are back in S'pore - christmas?
6:06 pm
orangeclouds said…
Yup can can :) See ya at Christmas!
6:15 pm
Anonymous said…
hi! i'm a friend of orangeclouds' (and we're in the same church, haha), who would like to know very much where this chicken wing stall is, because i live near PP and once took a drive with a friend through the PP side of PP and couldn't find it =)

thank you!
9:40 am
ampulets said…
Hi al & all chickwing lovers:
It's part of a hawker centre along TP Lorong 8...further down from the First Toa Payoh Primary School, by a major junction. There's a whole cluster of shops and a market, under the Potong Pasir Town Council. You can tell cos it's un-upgraded but homely old. The chickwings stall is at the corner of the market/hawker centre. He also sells satay...so just follow the smoke.

*warning - on some days, it's just satay. He's closed on Mondays, otherwise he closes at about 11pm (tho the wings are usually sold by 10pm). Your best bet is the weekend, but the wait is longer.
1:58 pm
Anonymous said…
ah, thanks again. it's in Toa Payoh itself, not PP...hence my confusion. PP doesn't have that many coffeehops so i thought a quick drive through the estate would get me some chicken wings. =)
6:23 pm
ampulets said…
actually his satay also quite good, but to be on the safe side, go by 9pm. We have a friend who tried for aout 5 times, but to no avail, cos she went at about 10pm. - TOHA
7:17 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

miracle man

Image
I can never quite tell if Ma J is asleep or just pretending The old lady in the bed next to Ma J's is in hospital because of a second stroke. When we were visiting Ma J this afternoon, the old lady's middle-aged son was also there. He was in his usual round-neck tee tucked into a pair of blue jeans with a belt made of buffalo hide. His limbs are slim, but his belly is round. His bald head, too, is round and abnormally large for his small frame. Let's call him Ah Biao , or if you prefer an English name, you can think of him as Bill (after his buffalo hide belt). When J and I walked out of the ward, Ah Biao or Bill followed us. Three of us stood around the counter by the nurses' work area. J and I were quiet, enjoying the break. Then Ah Biao wanted to show us something special. "Eh, I show you something." Ah Biao unzipped his black waist pouch and took out a small yellow cloth pouch. He untied the colourful string that secured the opening of the pouch. He weigh
Read the rest of this post

on a Hou Hsiao Hsien movie set

Image
By the tracks of the Jiji Station, the oldest train station in Taiwan OK, not quite. We did not even manage to go all the way south to Hou Hsiao Hsien's KaoShiung or even Tainan, but we did venture out from Taipei for 3 days to Taichung. But the real takeaway was actually this supposed feature of Hou Hsiao Hsien's films - trains! Trains are about the best thing about traveling. Unlike cars and taxis, trains are a social mode of transport. Train stations allow for reunions and departures, points to assess and affirm relationships. I admit that all this fades away when you are tired or in a great hurry (or both). But seriously, cars (oh, 4-wheelers!) have only brought about pollution and wasteful consumption, traffic jams, asphalt, mindless obsession with speed and countless quarrels in the stressful, enclosed interiors of cars. Friends, take it slow. Take the train. Read a book. Hold your partner's hand. Be there with the people around you. With Taiwan's highspeed rail
Read the rest of this post

fear not history

Image
Fiction on this island has never quite flourished. Perhaps because we've never quite made peace with our histories. But two genres of fiction hold special place in Singapore as a result. Ghost stories - the art of unresolved pasts. And that even stranger fruit of fact-as-fiction/fiction-as-history. Part speculative history. Part documentary fiction. A romance of obscurity. The Lan Fang Chronicles , Choy Ka Fai's work supported by the Arts Council's Arts Creation Fund and commissioned for this year's Arts Festival, is maybe of this latter genre. Choy Ka Fai chances upon the Lan Fang Republic, supposedly the first democratic republic in SEAsia, set up by the Hakka Chinese in West Borneo. His research in West Borneo, China and Holland takes him through archival material, abandoned sites, photocopied photographs, a supposed descendent of Luo Fang Bo (founder of Lan Fang) and accounts of Dutch missionaries and colonists. These materials allow him to re-construct a sk
Read the rest of this post