The times they are a-changing…

When I was a young boy, kampua was 50 cents a plate with meat and 30 cents without and coffee was 20 cents a cup. One could enjoy breakfast for less than one dollar (That was the currency we used then!). Gradually, it went up to two ringgit and then three…and the other day, I stopped by a coffee shop to have a plate of mee goreng Melayu (fried noodles Malay-style) and kopi-o peng (black coffee) and it cost me RM4.20…

The worst thing was that neither the noodles nor the coffee were that great…and they certainly were not worth the money. With that consideration in mind, I think from now onwards, I would just prepare my own breakfast at home…and eat out once a week after the church service on Sundays. Like yesterday, I had this bowl of Sarawak laksa at Sibu Thomson Corner and gee! The price had gone up to RM4.70! Good grief!!!

Eating out once a week on Sundays would be exactly like how it was when I was little. Life was a lot simpler and cheaper (and healthier?) then. These days, we eat out with the family so often that it has ceased to be anything special. During our younger days, we would hope and pray that somebody in the family would get married so that we would be able to tag along with our parents to the wedding banquet. Nowadays, the kids would sulk and say, “Not again!…Boring!” They are not in the least interested and I guess we can’t blame them!

So it’s back to home-cooked meals for me…and for breakfast, I can have fried rice if there’s any leftover from the previous day, or I can select from an array of choices…

I can have instant noodles or kway teow, or some mee sua perhaps…or I can use the egg noodles to make something like kampua (with soy sauce). For example, I cooked myself this bowl of kway teow soup…

It only costs 80 sen a packet and if you add the cost of the egg – say 30 sen, that will only cost RM1.10 (excluding the coriander leaves). Incidentally, two half-boiled eggs at Thomson Corner here cost RM1.40, that is 70 sen each!!! Goodness gracious! That’s more expensive than gerrie’s free-range eggs!!!

Anyway, to get back to what I was rambling about – making and eating breakfast at home, that is, I have taken out my 27-year-old coffee percolator to brew my own coffee…

How much is kopi-o peng now in the shops? RM1.50 a glass? If it is nice, like Ruby’s, then it isn’t so bad…but then more often than not, it tastes like dark-coloured sugar syrup. I won’t say that it tastes like ditch water (even though it sometimes looks like that) as I’ve never had that before! Anyway,I used to take instant coffee as I was too lazy and when I was working, I did not have the time (nor the patience) but now I have all the time in the world, and instant coffee is getting way too expensive too! Here in Sibu, we can get very nice ground coffee at around RM15-16 a kilo at Mui Hock; in fact, Ruby also buys the coffee powder from there. Incidentally, there are more expensive and cheaper varieties, if you’re interested, but a friend of mine gave me 1 kg beginning of last month…or was it towards the end of May? Now that will last for quite sometime before I’ll have to go out and buy my own. Ah! Just like old times…when I was a kid, and every morning, my mum would have a pot of freshly-brewed coffee on the dining room table and the fragrant aroma would fill the whole house! Ummmm!!!!…..Some things don’t have to change!