If I were a carpenter…

Well, I’m not…and neither am I going to talk about carpenters, just Carpenter Street in Kuching. I wonder how it got its name…for I used to hang around there as early as the 70’s but I don’t recall seeing any carpenter or a lot of carpenter shops – maybe a couple selling local-made furniture, that was all.

What I remember about the street was that there was a wide open section among one of the shop blocks. It may still be there today and it used to double as a temple and on certain festivals, they would have the Chinese wayang (opera shows) there. At other times, there were food stalls though I won’t know whether it’s the same today. I loved the kolo mee there and also that at a coffee shop further down the road at a T-junction, Carpenter Street with either Bishopgate or Temple Street.

Gerrie sent me this photograph of the kolo mee at Kim Joo coffee shop along Carpenter Street…

I don’t know if it’s the same coffeeshop that I used to go to but I can recall they had liver and all the pig’s innards. It was really delicious and what impressed me most was the waiter. Though a mere kid, he was able to remember what everybody wanted or did not want even though there were 5 or 6 of us. He did not even have to write it down and he would get all the orders correct. These days, you get those dumbos…and even though they write it down, they still mess everything up!

If I am not mistaken, there was a very popular restuarant there – Ang Lee Restaurant or something. Well, it was definitely not named after the famous movie director, that’s for sure, for it existed long before that guy came into the limelight! I had dinners there a few times but I can’t exactly place a finger on what the specialty of the house was. I think it could be the char siew there that was nice, I’m not too sure.

Well, I used to go to Carpenter Street a lot because I had a lot of friends in that vicinity. I knew a girl at the first shop on the right behind the General Post Office, and I had a friend who ran a stall selling sweets, tidbits and so on in between two blocks of shop houses at one of the T-junctions. Then I had a friend at Bishopgate and one at Temple Street and more at Main Bazaar. Sigh!!! Time and tide waits for no man…and in a blink of an eye, all that remain are the sweet memories of the happy moments we shared a long, long time ago. I do not know where they are now; I only hope they are all doing fine and leading happy lives. Who knows, one day, we may meet…but I won’t know whether we can still recognise one another anymore. After all, that was some 30-40 years ago…