Those days are gone…

…but the memories linger on.

The pupils of St. Rita along Bukit Assek Road here would fondly recall this man called Ah Hua who used to sell kompia across the road from their school.

Well, he is still around, looking exactly the way he did back then, and now runs a stall at the Sibu Central Market…

…at the hawker centre on the first floor…

Gundot went to eat at his stall when she was in town and posted some photographs on Facebook. Clare saw that and when she and Alvin came to town for the weekend, she simply had to make a beeline to that place for the kompia…

*Gundot’s photos on Facebook

We walked around the whole place looking for the stall and was about to give up when I saw two of my ex-students, now in the university and back in town on holiday, eating there. I asked them where Ah Hua’s kompia stall was located and they said that was the one! Gee! The sign was so small that it would be quite difficult actually to notice it.

Personally though, I would very much prefer the kompia at the Sugar Bun, Gateway branch and I thought the ang tau peng (iced red beans)…

…that I had wasn’t much to shout about either. In my opinion, the one I had at Rinta Cafe was a lot nicer or even the one at Thomson Corner.

Alvin had the ang tau cendol (red beans with the green jelly-like thing)…

…and Clare had the ngor-bee therng (five flavoured soup), the five being red dates, barley, jelly, some kind of little white nuts plus sliced jelly candy which is a popular cooling dessert drink around here…

Well, it certainly was a walk down memory for Clare that day…and it looks like we will have to go back there again sometime…for the Ah Kia Teochew Noodles – something that we had and loved during our younger days along the lane behind the Chartered Bank, as it was called then, along Cross Road. The stall was not open that day…so I’m afraid that will have to wait till the next time we get to drop by the place again.