The boundaries between wakefulness and sleep fray amongst patients with narcolepsy. Here, narcoleptic hawker Jonathan Yap is going against the grain to make Peranakan food great again.
Running a hawker stall in Singapore has never been and will never be a walk in the park, to say the least. But for hawker Jonathan Yap, who runs Emerald Peranakan Kitchen at Berseh Food Centre, operating a hawker stall is an arduous challenge that he must overcome. Daily.
At first encounter, Jonathan looks like a happy-go-lucky chap. He loves interacting with his customers and can be seen making small talks with his neighbours when the lunch crowd subsides. And at times, he whips out his phone to take pictures of his dishes to publish on social media. But unbeknownst to many, the 39-year-old hawker suffers from narcolepsy with cataplexy.
The Hawker with Narcolepsy
For the uninitiated, narcolepsy is a sleeping disorder that causes overwhelming daytime drowsiness and sudden attacks of sleep. “Patients with narcolepsy have disordered regulation of sleep during the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) phase—you encounter multiple cycles of this when you sleep—and this intrudes into their wakefulness,” Dr Tushar Gosavi, Senior Consultant at the Department of Neurology in the National Neuroscience Institute at Singapore General Hospital (NNI@SGH). “It is not an autoimmune or mental disorder. Narcolepsy can be inherited, but only in rare instances.”
That said, patients with narcolepsy are rare. The NNI@SGH encounters about seven to 10 new cases a year. Most patients, Jonathan included, suffer from excessive daytime sleepiness, not to be confused with lethargy, despite having a good night’s rest. Some patients may also encounter vivid dreams that are so vivid that they may think they are hallucinating, says Dr Gosavi.
“I tend to get tired and fall asleep at the most inappropriate times. I have broken plates, bowls and cups along the way,” Jonathan, not one to shy away from his sleep attacks (sudden onset of overwhelming feeling of sleepiness), says. In Jonathan’s case, to suffer from cataplexy, one of narcoplexy’s symptoms, is to suffer from an uncontrollable muscle weakness that leads to a state of temporary, partial or complete paralysis. Oftentimes, cataplectic episodes are triggered by strong emotions, from negativity to bouts of laughter.
On what it is like to have cataplexy, Jonathan explains it in the layman. “It’s like my brain is still alert, but I have lost motor control of my body.”
It is common sense that getting enough sleep is key to healthy living. And yet, we are living in an era that capitalises on sleeplessness; the ever-growing market of coffee haunts is a testament to that. Singaporeans are also amongst the most sleep-deprived worldwide. Many, myself included, are guilty of sacrificing sleep to get the job done. Inevitably this also makes diagnosing patients with narcolepsy even more difficult.
It is, thus, not surprising for someone with narcolepsy to spend years living with the disorder before getting properly diagnosed. Jonathan, himself, only got diagnosed when he was serving in the military. Dr Gosavi explains, “Narcolepsy has historically always been difficult to diagnose early, as many of its symptoms are ignored by patients as just normal ‘sleepiness’.
“When we see any patient with sleepiness as the symptom, a detailed history of his or her regular sleeping habits is extremely important,” Dr Gosavi adds. “Sleepiness in the day time due to sleep deprivation can be easily corrected by adopting good sleep hygiene. However, the sleepiness in narcolepsy persists even when one sleeps well at night.”
For a normal sleeper to understand how a non-medicated narcoleptic feel on a daily basis, he or she would have to stay awake for two or three days. Dr Gosavi’s colleague at NNI@SGH, Associate Professor Pavanni Ratnagopal, is quick to add, “The sleepiness one experiences could be extreme in narcolepsy, like what one might feel with severe sleep deprivation. However, narcolepsy has additional features associated with it.”
Besides sleep attacks and daytime sleepiness, narcoleptics may feel refreshed after a short-planned nap. A sleep-derived person will unlikely feel energised after a nap.
Often Misunderstood
For a long time, narcoleptics are often and easily misunderstood.
In the 19th century, narcolepsy was first described as a condition caused as a result of excessive masturbation and repressed homosexuality. In some instances, especially between the late-1990s and the early-2000s, the condition was treated as a psychological disorder instead of as a neurological one.
“There is evidence to suggest that narcolepsy occurs due to deficiency of a neuropeptide orexin (also known as hypocretin) in a region of the brain called the hypothalamus,” explains Dr Gosavi.
Because individuals with narcolepsy are often only diagnosed when they are adults, they spent the bulk of their childhood feeling confused and misunderstood. Relatives, especially those in our Asian household, would trivialise the disorder and play doctor with suggestions, such as sleeping earlier and exercising, to deal with the uncontrollable sleepiness. “Patients with narcolepsy are often perceived to be lazy or lacking interests in their study and work,” says Associate Professor Ratnagopal.
Jonathan, too, also faced such ridicule and comparison growing up. “Before I was diagnosed, I thought I was lazier than most people. Looking back, I have had been called ‘lazy’ all my life and even today, I still get called so,” Jonathan says. “I used to get angry, but not that much anymore.”
Remembering Peranakan Roots
At Emerald Peranakan Kitchen, there is pageantry on the plate: crispy keropok (fried crackers) with colourful rims, vibrant pops of chunky Peranakan achar (a type of pickled vegetables), and a tantalising slab of chicken drumstick, doused in fragrant satay goreng gravy, are placed around a piping hot bowl of rice.
Dishes from this Berseh Food Centre hawker stall are without one doubt Peranakan; Jonathan is Peranakan, the dishes are inspired by his late-grandmother’s cooking, and the recipes, while born out of countless bouts of trial and error, comprise a mix of Chinese ingredients, Malay and Indonesian spices, and a blend of cooking techniques.
“My grandmother’s Ayam Buah Keluak (a traditional Peranakan dish comprising chicken, tamarind gravy and buah keluak nuts) was what started me on this culinary journey,” says Jonathan. But it was not until her passing that probed him to pursue Peranakan cuisine. “When she passed away, everything was lost,” Jonathan, who had reached out to his extended family for her recipes but to no avail, adds. “Nobody had her recipes.”
Mastering Peranakan cuisine is by no means an easy feat. Real Peranakan cuisine is complex, earthy and rich; it entails heat, occasionally some form of tanginess, and of course, the unique amalgamation of spices that will easily impress and confuse the layperson. Jonathan, who has had no background in the culinary arts, was not disheartened. Instead, equipped with his distinct memories of his grandmother’s cooking, he persevered on, and learned the ropes of hawking by “helping out at (his) friends’ stalls” before setting up his own in 2020.
Even today, every dish he cooks is a feat (more on that later) to celebrate his grandmother’s cooking and improve his skills.
A Hawker Centre’s Kampung Spirit
To be a hawker is to embrace the daily hustle and bustle; you cook, take orders, prepare those orders, and handle transactions. During the peak periods, hawkers and their teamwork continuously cater to the incessant crowd (and their rumbling bellies). If anything, a hawker must have the stamina to endure both heat in the kitchen and the day’s work.
Many hawkers, for instance, are capable of tending to their stalls until the evening or when they sell out. “Looking at the other hawkers, I feel jealous that I cannot do the same,” Jonathan confesses with a smile.
Jonathan goes to work at nine in the morning. From then, he prepares his day’s work until half-past eleven or noon before he opens for business. He then mans his booth until seven in the evening. “One of the things that I am blessed with at this hawker centre is that there are very good neighbours surrounding me,” Jonathan says. And he is right; it is impossible to talk about hawker-preneurism without talking about the kampung spirit within a hawker centre.
One of his neighbours, who sells Bak Kut Teh opposite his stall, would keep a lookout for him just in case Jonathan dozes off at the drop of his hat. “Just the other day, one of (the other hawkers) smelled something burning and the first thing he did was to run into my stall to check on me,” Jonathan recounts.
In this vein, Jonathan remains grateful and touched by the community of hawkers around him. He says, “I never expect so much support from my neighbours, business partner, my dad and my brother.”
When it comes to his job, Jonathan takes a calibrated approach to things. He has long acknowledged that power naps are crucial for him to work safely and he does so, often at the tables around his stall, whenever he needs to. Often, he wakes with a sore neck and back. “Most times, I would just keep going despite the pain. If it gets too painful, I would take painkillers.”
Jonathan spent four years experimenting in the kitchen before his Peranakan dishes came close to his late grandmother’s. Like any hawker, he takes pride in his craft. “Some customers even told me that my food reminded them of their grandmother’s or mother’s cooking,” he beams. “Seeing the smile on their faces as they share their story really gives me a sense of fulfilment.”
Address:
Emerald Peranakan Kitchen
Berseh Food Centre
166 Jalan Besar Road, #02-53
Singapore 208877