Hard-boiled: A description on the act of consuming a favourite breakfast.

Yes, that’s the three half boiled eggs that I had last week. Not pigeon diarrhea as the legend proclaimed.

This article from The Sun Daily interest me deeply. I could absolutely relate to it. Half boiled egg is not only my favourite breakfast these days, but has since become almost compulsory activity for weekends, like movie watching and toe nail clipping.

As one can note from the feature there, it is about customers complaining about the need to crack the half boil eggs themselves. They are better off if the eggs come from cracked shells as presented at the eateries of choice. Well, they are not alone in this. I am with them, and by Jove, when I say I am with them, I am not actually physically with them, I have never met them.

But we are all one in agreeing the issue at hand. Get it? Hand. That handles those egg which, when handed to you, not only singes your finger but provokes your previously calm self into yelling unprintable words. All the social media stuff you posted tirelessly preaching manners, values and quotes of your favourite Swamiji goes down the drain because you feel they have handed you couple of hot coal instead of eggs.

Now, apart from Nasi Lemak Bungkus, half boiled eggs are fast becoming my favourite breakfast meal. It provides me enough energy to before my biological battery is reduced to a single bar about ten meters after I leave the table. The one I currently like the best is in Rawang, where somehow, they have the right soy sauce it; and – this is the best part - they crack the eggs for you.

Wait, let me rephrase that. They break the eggs for you. Most other outlets, especially Mamak restaurants/stalls, you hafta do it on your own. You struggle with the eggs which are usually hot enough to melt metal step ladders. Hence, I end up using the serviettes on which I place the eggs and crack it using the ceramic spoon. These Kopi Tiam spoons, by the way, are designed to dig up sloppy things like porridges or parts of bread toasts you dunk too long that have drowned themselves in the coffee. They are not for cracking egg shells.

Because, these spoons do not respond well to egg shells, they are shy that way. With force often reserved for hammering concrete nails, one can create cracks on the shells which is deemed damaging enough to be able to rip the egg apart...hopefully into two. It does not appear to be so. Well, it will never appear to be so, each bloody time. It’s not a clean crack you can split with both thumbs. No.

See, I use both hands, carefully placing thumbs nearing each other on the widest possible crack spotted, for the centre to be pulled apart only …. the eggs shells start cracking at places that I had not wished for it to start cracking, with the crack’s hairline extension spreading quickly all over the egg. Happy?

Not yet, because the cracks are held together by stubborn inner membrane layer holding on to the cracks loyally like an insurance agent during the client's dying days. In efforts to finally rip the shells apart, I break more corners and by then the white of the egg and the yolk had already leaked out, mixing onto each other, with bits of those bits of shells in it….

… and then, onto the saucer, or bowl, it goes. Then, you gotta scoop out the remaining stubborn whites and yolks clinging hard to the inner wall of the shell...where you might unintendedly crack more of the shells and they start crumbling again. Meantime, the serviette you used to hold the egg shells looks assaulted and disgraced that you might even want to throw it out on your own, secretly, because it looks like a disposed tissue paper used to cleanse the results of nightly self-persuasion.

That is why I prefer the Rawang outlet. They break it for you and the sauce is delicious as long as you use the right number of squeezes (gently) or you will end up drinking egg flavoured dark salty gruel. Also, they give a tiny spoon, instead of the kopi Tiam ceramic spoon, as you can see from the pix.

Scooping the egg in that tiny spoon, sipping that coffee (not that great, but at least better than most here, and definitely better than the filtered through fresh-from-the-field-footballers-socks coffee in Mamak shops) …. makes the weekend worth waiting for.