The bees…

I’ve told you about the birds…and the cats…and now, let me tell you about the bees!

Well, that day, my girl wanted the beef noodles…

…again so we dropped by here…

…for that. Oh dear! It looked like they had taken down the sign for the jiaozi (meat dumplings) that were not to our liking. I hope it was because they were, in fact, not selling well and not because of what I had said.

That day, both my girl and the mum had the beef noodles and yes, they sure enjoyed their orders to the max. I decided to go for the duck rice that comprised this plate of roast duck…

…and the chicken rice…

…instead and of course, I also asked for one stewed egg…

…to go with it. Everything was good but I did feel the rice was nicer that day when I bought some for lunch at my girl’s school – it had a very much stronger and nicer garlic fragrance then. Looking at the way things were, I would wish they had much better quality control so what I would eat one day would be exactly or almost the same, should I eat that same thing again at a later date.

Now, going back to the bees, it is a favourite pastime of a lot of people here. From what I’ve been told, you can buy a swarm of bees, inclusive of the birdhouse-like hives, to keep for the honey. I am not too sure but my guess is somebody in the vicinity is into that so that day, the bees came fluttering around, much to the discomfort of everybody who, like us, had gone there for lunch. These are the so-called bite or stingless bees, quite harmless, but still they were quite a nuisance as they would be flying all over in front of everybody’s faces and we were quite irritated by the fact that we had to keep waving at them to get them to go away. That sure took away some of the enjoyment and if they are there again the next time we drop by, I sure would choose to go some place else instead…and eat in peace.

After we had had our lunch, we decided to stroll to the mall a stone’s throw away. The Christmas decorations were up already…

– nothing very elaborate but I guess something is better than nothing and I did think the gingerbread houses…

…from here were quite nice.

On another day, we stopped by this coffee shop right round the corner in the same commercial area for lunch. No, we did not go for the very nice roast stuff at one of the stalls there but instead, we decided that we would order a few dishes from the chu-char (cook-fry) place at the back. They were the same people here a long time ago and we did drop by quite often like for instance, here or here. The last I saw them, they were here and at this point in time, they are here. From what I have observed, since they moved here, business has been really brisk and that coffee shop is always busy, with a whole lot of people any time of day.

We had their sweet and sour spare ribs…

…and their salad sotong (squid/calamari)…

…(anything served with mayo here, they would call salad). Good grief! They certainly were very generous with the mayonnaise, as you can see. I wish they had served that separately in a bowl so we could just dip as and when we felt like it.

We had our usual cangkuk manis fried with egg…

…and this tofu dish…

…as well.

I kept reiterating that we would not want a lot of each dish, enough for two and yet what came out in the end was a bit too much for the three of us to finish, so much so that we had to tapao quite a lot home…and we had that for dinner that same day. Now, the best part was that the bill came up to only RM36.60 for the food, inclusive of three plates of rice and that sure was a welcome surprise. This is relatively cheap compared to most, if not all, of the other places in town…and considering the fact that like all this while over the years even at their previous locations, what they dish out is really quite nice, no wonder it is always so crowded.

Well, one thing’s for sure, if the bees are going to take up permanent residence at that other coffee shop round the corner, I definitely would opt to eat here instead. We did not see any of those pesky insects here!