We will meet again…

It was on Malaysia Day, September 16th last week – the reunion gathering…

…that I was invited to by my ex-students in Kanowit where I taught from 1978 till 1982.

As a matter of fact, an ex-student of mine, not the same year – probably a year younger than the ones organising the function, from that same school owns this restaurant…

…where the reunion was held on the first floor…

…of the Sibu Express Terminal…

*Archive photo*

 I did hear of him running this restaurant there and I even met him once at the wharf when I was waiting for someone but somehow or other, I never got round to dropping by to check this place out.

I was glad that this batch of students decided to hold the gathering there – that would be an opportunity for me to drop by, killing two birds with one stone so to speak. The food was good – there was this more-than-four seasons…

…and this pumpkin dish…

…came towards the end when I was very full already so I did not eat whatever that was inside and after this one, there was a prawn dish but I did not take any photograph of it as I was up and about, mingling when it was served and when I came back, the rest at the table was already halfway through – I did try one though despite the fact that I could hardly take in anymore and I thought it was pretty good.

So what did we have, other than the three aforementioned dishes plus a fruit platter? They got somebody to cook a few local Cantonese delights such as the sour duck…

…and the kampung chicken dish…

Both were very nice but I did not eat much of the meat. Instead, I just enjoyed the gravy with my rice and between the two, I thought the sourish and very much stronger-tasting duck sauce had an edge over the chicken.

There was a sourish soup of pork knuckle and dried cuttle fish and I just had the soup – I had a HUGE bowl of pork knuckle for lunch that day (This will be in my next post!) so I did not want to have anymore and for that same reason, I only had a piece of what is called in Hokkien, the Dayak pig (lakia too)…

…which probably means that the meat was organic, the product of some livestock rearing in some ethnic village or longhouse, hence the name.

Then, this…

…was served – the exclusive worth-its-weight-in-gold ikan semah from the upper reaches of the Rejang River, second only to the empurau, known as Wang Poo Liao (unforgettable) in Mandarin…and I always say that for the amount of money you would have to pay for the fish, it would come as no surprise at all that you will never ever forget it.

One of the students had these specially ordered and delivered for the dinner that night and of course, I feasted on it…

Opportunities like this to enjoy the fish would be extremely few and very very far between…and somebody even commented that each spoonful is worth at least RM50.00 so you can imagine how expensive one is.

There was karaoke too…

…that night but no, I did not sing though not too long ago, I would have gone on stage singing my heart out. I had a terrible cough once and lost my voice completely and when I finally got it back, I was speaking like Rod Stewart for quite sometime before I got my normal voice back. To my horror, I discovered that I could no longer sing – my voice would be all over the place and after a verse or two, my voice would be gone. I guess it looks like I will be never ever be able to sing again. Sobssss!!!!

Well, I certainly enjoyed the dinner and meeting all my lovely ex-students again…

*Photo through the kind courtesy of one of my ex-students*

– thank you all for remembering and inviting me again. We had our first ever reunion in December last year and this is the second time we got together and hopefully, we’ll meet again.