Shining like the sun…

It has been pouring cat and dogs around here and with the King Tide around that same time, some parts of town were flooded but thankfully, at the time of writing, there has been two fine days in a row and I certainly hope the weather holds for even though, it may be very nice and cool, the damp conditions sure gets everybody down and it would be hard to go out and do stuff that one would want to do.

Well, my friend, Philip, is presently home from the US and I did manage to drop by to see him and we took advantage of the sunny weather to stop by this coffee shop that I have blogged a few times before and the fact that it was named Sunny was purely coincidental.

Philip left town in the early 70’s to further his studies overseas and at that time, Sibu was a small, not very presentable town with hardly anything much other than kampua and kompia and Malay food stalls were few and far between owing to the small population here. That was why come Christmas and Chinese New Year, many would head to our house to enjoy my mum’s curry…and during Hari Raya, everyone would flock to the kampung to visit their friends for the same despite the fact that many, at the time, were not really adventurous in what they ate and were not really into anything too hot and spicy.

So it was with Philip and this was the first time he tried mee jawa…

…and he liked it a lot. He loved the prawn fritters too – you would get five of those if you add RM1.00 more and request for the special though the prawns in the ones we had that day were a bit small. I guess that’s because it is the rainy season right now and good, fresh prawns are really hard to come by, big or small.

I ordered the mee goreng (fried noodles)…

…but it seemed that in place of the usual yellow noodles, they used the smaller kampua noodles instead but it did not matter really as it was very nicely done and very tasty. I was quite sure I could detect a hint of kunyit (tumeric) in the myriad of flavourful  ingredients used in the frying. I let Philip try a bit and he too agreed that it  was very nice.

In the midst of our conversation, I mentioned that the kampua noodles noodles here were very nice too despite the absence of lard and I would bring friends here – those who can only have the halal version of the much coveted Sibu Foochow delight. Normally, I would not bother about the noodles at these Malay places as so far, all that I had tried had been very disappointing. Hearing that, Philip insisted on ordering a plate…

…and yes, he conceded that they were great. The oil used to toss that noodles had been used to fry a generous amount of shallots and was hence, very fragrant indeed.

I noticed that they have done something to the somewhat murky-looking, dilapidated stall now – it looks nice and new…and I also noticed that there are some Chinese helping out as well though the two doing all the cooking are the same Malay ladies who were there before. In the past, the coffee shop (drinks) was run by some Chinese folks but not the food stalls. I did not bother to ask but it certainly looks like they have taken over the stall but they have been wise enough to retain the ladies to do the cooking so the quality of all that is served has not been affected, not in the least.

We had a delightful brunch that day and it certainly was great to meet friends from afar to catch up with things where we left off the last time around. Philip was so nice as to lug all these goodies…

…all the way from the US just for me, especially the Three Cheese that my ex-student, Raphael, gave to me once and I blogged about how nice it was and how Melissa loved it very very much and Philip, upon seeing that, went out to grab me some more plus another brand as well to try, Betty Crocker no less! You shouldn’t have gone through all that trouble, Philip, but I do appreciate it a lot – thank you so so very much.

And incidentally, this came via poslayu…oops, I mean poslaju, from a blogger friend…

…and boy, I certainly was pleasantly surprised. Thankfully, I received it the very next day after it was sent as I’ve been hearing lots of horror stories about how things were taking ages to arrive.

I was not expecting anything from her and it sure was sweet of her to send me these…

…and if she went through all that trouble to send me those, they must be pretty good – just can’t wait to try them out. Thank you so much to you too, Azura.