Doing what she likes…

My girl likes the chap fan (mixed rice) here but they do not have it on Saturdays and Sundays so we would not be able to go for it when she comes home on weekends. We were here once on a public holiday and they did not have it either and the lady was saying something about the school holidays coming up at the time so I had the understanding that they would not be having it when schools were having their breaks as well.

Anyway, the other day, we just decided to go and have a look and to our delight, yes, they had chap fan and everything was ready on the counter so we stopped by there for lunch.

I love this old school bell…

…there and even though it isn’t even Christmas yet, the Chinese New Year decorations are up…

…already. Sibu, being a predominantly Chinese town, the emphasis here is more on this Chinese festival and not so much on Christmas. You can see all the red lanterns and Chinese New Year decorations at all the shops in town and they have started playing the ear-splitting songs. Thankfully, they did not do that here while we were there.

Next year is the Year of the Rooster and I do hope this is not an indication of the somewhat bleak days ahead with our economy in such a bad shape…

The poor bird is so thin, stripped bare and being strangled by the noose round its neck. With the ever dwindling value of our miserable ringgit, people being retrenched left, right and centre and those who cannot even find a decent job upon graduation, perhaps it would be a good idea to be more prudent and celebrate moderately…starting with doing away with all those fireworks and firecrackers that are so expensive they will burn holes in your pockets so big that you will not have any left.

The chap fan here is priced at RM6.80 for two meat and three vegetables plus a complimentary soup and free flow of orange cordial or Chinese tea. This was what my girl and the mum picked…

– fried chicken drumstick, steamed tofu with sliced pork, fried cangkuk manis and bayam and omelette (which for some reason here, falls into the vegetable category).

I picked the cangkuk manis and the omelette…

…too but I also had the salted vegetables, the Japanese bean curd with minced pork and the steamed fish fillet with fermented beans.

The steamed minced pork…

…looked good but at one time, my missus cooked it ever so often and so much at a time that we had to eat that same thing for days so of course, I gave it a pass…and I did not quite care for the claypot soy sauce chicken…

…either. I would surely have dived straight in had it been pork leg or pork belly.

Business looked quite good – there were quite a number of people starting to come as lunch hour drew near. They start at 11.30 a.m. and when we got there around that time, everything was ready .