Communication between AngularJS Directive & Parent Controller

I am new to AngularJS and currently stuck with a design question. Sorry in advance as this is going to be long-winded.

Scenario#1

I'm using a third-party directive (type-ahead) which exposes a event "selected" via $emit. I need to update the model on the type-ahead "selected" event which in-turn drives some other logic.

I feel that handling the selected event in the parent controller (testController) is not ideal since if there are multiple typeahead directives in the same scope, how do I associate the event with the element when im doing this wire-up outside the directive ?

So watching on the model property for changes(name1) seems to be the only clean option. Am I correct ?

     <div ng-app="testApp">
       <div ng-controller="testController">
          <type-ahead ng-model="name1" source="typeAhead1Data"></type-ahead>
          <!--<type-ahead ng-model="name2" source="typeAhead2Data"></type-ahead>-->
       </div>
    </div>

    angular.module('testApp').controller('testController', ["$scope", function ($scope) {

        $scope.typeAhead1Data = ['abc','def','ghi'];
        //$scope.typeAhead2Data = ['jkl','mno','pqr'];

        //This seems like a bad idea since what if I had another type-ahead
        //control in the scope of the same controller...
        $scope.$on('typeahead:selected', function (e, val) {
            //logic to be performed on type-ahead select
            $scope.name1 = val;
        });

        /*
        // the other approach that came to mind is doing a watch 
        $scope.$watch('name1', function () {
            //logic to be performed on type-ahead select
        });
         */
     }]);

Scenario#2

Lets say I have a directive that adds a menu to every list item in an unordered list. The menu item click should trigger an action. If the directive raises an event via $emit, I will run into the same issue of associating the event with the element and performing the necessary post-processing.

In jquery, the way I would have done this is add a class to the list item and attach an event using the class selctor.

Any thoughts ?

thanks