For you…

It was just for me and actually, I got it quite a while ago but I had to keep it in the freezer all this time as I had been pretty busy with people coming and going so I did not have time to cook it and besides, we had been eating out quite a lot lately. However, the first opportunity I got, I took the meat out and cooked soup with it the way we would do it in my family (but using the slow cooker, lazy me) and this was the end result…

Now, where did I get this very rare commodity from? An ex-student of mine is now serving at a school upriver as a teacher and he just received the Excellent Service Award. I saw the good news on Facebook and extended my heartiest congratulations and jokingly asked him for a treat to which he replied, “No problem!” A couple of days later , I got word from him that he had managed to get hold of some of this exotic meat and had bought some for me and he would pass it to me when he got back to town.

So was it any good? Ooooo…I must say it was superb, top quality and when you have the meat of this class, you can be sure that the soup would be so fragrant, so flavourful, so delicious! I did manage to get hold of some a few times at the market in Selangau but those had been quite disappointing so I never bothered buying from there again.

Incidentally, when we met at a coffee shop near my house for breakfast, I was pleasantly surprised to see another ex-student of mine with him, a sweet and very nice girl and a tall one too…like him and like him, she is a teacher too. They did say though that they would not be tying the knot just yet, maybe next year, so all the best to the two of you and hopefully, I will get your summons…to join in the happy occasion and thank you so much, Tham, for the meat and also for the breakfast treat. Do get me some more should you come across any that is nice – but of course, the next time around, I would insist on paying for it. It is so hard to get hold of such good ones so I would be most happy and thankful to be able to lay my hands on any at all.

Now, that same day when I cooked this delightful soup, I got word from my friend, Jimmy, in Kuching saying that he had something just for me and he would be sending it over by bus so I would have to go and collect it at the bus terminal the following morning which I did…and I got this…

…very nicely packed item that resembled a tiffin carrier or a handbag perhaps. Good grief! I wonder how long he took to pack the thing so nicely…but that’s Jimmy for you! Always very meticulous, a perfectionist true and true.

Gosh! Opening that was such a task that I was thinking it probably would be much easier breaking into Fort Knox.  ROTFL!!! After cutting through the plastic wrapper, I got to a layer of cardboard and I thought that cutting through that, I would get to the thing inside but no, how wrong could I be! There were some more layers of plastic and newspapers…

…that I had to go through before getting to the  much coveted treasure enclosed…

No wonder there wasn’t any smell at all on the outside – it was so very tightly sealed that there was absolutely no way out!

So what was it that he sent me? This big tub of the most wonderful tempoyak (fermented durian)…

…that he so painstakingly made himself…

Ahhhhh!!!! Doesn’t that look soooooo good? Absolutely beautiful, don’t you agree? Hmmm…now I have tempoyak of the best quality to cook some of those very delightful tempoyak dishes. Perhaps I can serve them for my Chinese New Year open house this year – in case you do not realise it, it’s just a little bit more than a month away. Anybody would like to drop by? Wink! Wink!

Thank you, thank you, Jimmy!!! I really can’t thank you enough for this…and for everything!