Introduction

In any culture, turning 80 is a very significant birthday and in the Peranakan context, it is called the Tua Sa-air Jik. This is even more important as our mother Kathleen Chia is the eldest sibling in the 4th generational line of Chia Ann Siang. She is known as Ta Chi - or Big Sis.

We wanted to honour her with a special birthday party on 22 July 2014, with a Peranakan theme of course. Food  is very important and in the olden days, special dishes would be carefully prepared before hand for the Makan Besar. However in modern day Singapore, this is not possible as we are all busy people and fortunately, there are caterers who can do the job. The challenge of course is which one? Guan Hoe Soon was considered as they actually catered for Mom's wedding some 55 years ago but the one that we finally selected upon was Peramakan. First tried them at Keppel Club few years back and Mom actually approved of their food.

However, they did not have a private room that could cater for 30+ guests and we ended up renting the whole restaurant at Herbal Oasis. This was a business that my sister Sharon helped with design work recently and the owner was kind and happy to close the restaurant for us that evening. This gave us the opportunity to decorate it the way we wanted it and Sharon did an excellent job with hand-sewn batik table cloth, flowers, cutlery for the tables. There were also other brilliant decor like candles, banners etc.

Sharon worked on the invitation card based on the Peranakan theme and it turned out absolutely beautiful as expected from my talented sis. A Facebook event page was also created for the more internet savvy youngsters.

The guest list was limited to 30 and my father came up with the list. They were mostly family and with some close friends. We were honoured that Aunt Grace, Aunt Swee Eng and cousin Stuart came all the way from Sydney Australia while Prim, our dear friend of 15 years flew in from Bangkok for this event.

It was also significant that we had Ee Hoon, who is an active member of Heritage Bukit Brown present. It is through the hard work of her team that our ancestor's 120 year old tomb was discovered in Sep 2012.

Another special guest that really contributed to the evening was Andrew Cheng, my son Jeremy's high school mate from Perth. He is a concert violinist with the Western Australian Youth Orchestra. It was providence that he was passing through Singapore enroute from Taiwan and could grace us with his amazing violin skills. Here he is with Jeremy practicing the Little Nonya theme for the very first few times.

We wanted people to dress up for the occassion and the theme was Peranakan. All in, it took a lot of preparation to get everything done but every effort was worth it. It is after all, Mom's 80th Grand Birthday and this is the best way we can honor our dear mother.