My mistake…

This place sure needs no introduction…

I guess most everybody in town would know about it, considering that there will be so many people there every morning and past 10.00 a.m., the beef noodles would have been all sold out. It’s just round the corner from my house but I do not drop by that frequently these days as unless I go very early, it can get rather crowded and it may be difficult to find a seat…plus another reason that I will reveal later in this post.

The last time I blogged about it was in 2008 when I was still using the old mobile phone camera but this lady…

…goes a long way back. She was around at this location in the early 90’s when my girl was just a toddler and we would stop by there regularly as she loved the soup – she would finish all/most of it and no prize for guessing who ate all/most of the beef and the noodles…and even after the lady had moved here, we would still drop by time and time again.

Actually, I was going to the grocery shop next door that morning and seeing that it was still early and the place was not so crowded, I decided to sit down and have coffee and these…

– her kampua noodles and beef soup set.

Yes, it was as nice as always and she certainly was very generous with the noodles – I thought that was really a lot more than what I would get before…in a small bowl. I love her own home-made chili sauce…

…which goes absolutely well with the beef and if one adds a bit to the noodles, it certainly would bring it to a whole new level. Very nice indeed!

I gave her a RM20.00 note and she gave me one RM10.00 note and a RM5.00 one in return and without giving it a second thought (as I was busy taking photographs and could not wait to start eating), I just shoved the change into my pocket. When I was about to leave, it dawned on me that I had only paid RM5.00 for everything. Normally, a plate of kampua noodles without any meat added would be RM1.80/RM2.00…

…or more, if they have jacked up the price since…and a glass of kopi-o peng (iced black coffee) is RM1.80 in most of the other shops in town. Then, that would leave only RM1.40/RM1.20 for that very nice bowl of beef soup…

…I thought. Gosh! The very small bowl with just a few meatballs that I had here was already RM2.00, mind you!

Pretty sure that she had made a mistake and assuming that the RM5.00 was just for the noodles and soup, I went to ask if she had charged me for the drink…but yes, it was RM1.50 a glass and RM3.50 for the noodles and the soup, making a total of RM5.00 altogether and the mistake was mine, all mine.

It was getting busier by then and yes, she was getting crankier unlike when I first got there when there were not so many people and she was very chatty, asking about my daughter and why I would not go on conducting English tuition classes and what not…and she did not seem very happy at all that I went to ask (or maybe she just assumed that I was going to complain that I was shortchanged)…and as a matter of fact, that’s the other reason why I have avoided this place during “peak hours” – one might be in danger of being snapped at as chances are she would be in one of her foul moods but I guess old folks like us reserve the right to be grumpy, no? I have to admit that my patience would be wearing somewhat thin too sometimes especially when I need to cope with a lot of things at hand.

Well, lesson learnt, next time if I feel that I’ve been under-charged, just leave…quietly. Don’t ask!