Still remember…

One of the most rewarding things about being a teacher is when the students still remember you, even those whom you do not have the opportunity to teach. I feel sad for those whose names their students cannot even remember – that thin one, wore spectacles…or that fierce one with a very loud voice and so on and so forth. In the words of Maya Angelou, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Well, this group of ex-students of mine in Kanowit around 1980…

*Ex-student’s photo forwarded via Facebook*

…sure remember me still, praise the Lord. They could even recall that I was their Form Teacher for two years when they were in Form 2 and Form 3. I was not able to attend their 2017 reunion in December that was held in Bintulu and the other day, out of the blue, one of them contacted me and  invited me to join them for dinner here, upstairs…

I was quite surprised as I was not expecting it at all – I did hear from one of them that they will hold another reunion in Sibu sometime later this year and this wasn’t it. It sure was great to see all of them again and I felt so very happy that they are doing so well in their lives. I guess nothing makes a teacher happier than seeing ex-students making it good once they have left school.

My photographs did not come out too well except for this plate of the Four Heavenly Kings…

…that went so very well with the canned pork cubes it was fried with and this one, a sourish pork leg soup…

According to them, they were all their traditional Cantonese Hakka dishes including the sour duck, roast and soy sauce kampung pig pork and there was a plate of kampung chicken too plus the fried sweet potato leaves were very nicely done as well.

One of them went and bought this ikan semah…

*Ex-student’s photo forwarded via Facebook*

…the upriver Kapit fish, second only to the very expensive wang poo liao (cannot forget) or the empurau and this one did not come cheap either – RM180 a kilo and the one we had was 1.4 kilo altogether. He got it from the brother of one of their classmates who was not with us that night and of course, it was very very fresh and very very nice unlike some empuraus that I have had lately, frozen too long and I thought they were kind of bland, quite tasteless and could have been any other fish.

We had a joyful evening filled with lots of smiles and I sure look forward to the next time we can get together like this again. Thank you all for the invitation and thank you especially to Hoi Kian, the host for the evening. May God bless you abundantly and everybody too in this new year and all the years ahead. Cheers!!!

SIBU TOWN CAFE (2.328216, 111.855481) is located at Ulu Sungai Merah 18F, opposite the Wonderful Supermarket and Departmental Store in that area of shops.