Who’s to blame…

The other morning, I noticed that we were running low on eggs in the house so after I had had my breakfast, I went out to one of the shops in the next lane, Jalan Ruby, to buy some…

Normally, I would only buy a tray but at a time like this, I would cart two trays home. We may have one or two in the morning, half-boiled/cooked or whichever way we choose, for breakfast and we also use it as an ingredient in our cooking like when frying vegetables like cangkok manis…

…or when we would like to have some stewed eggs…

…and on days when we do not have enough left for dinner, instead of cooking something else, an easy way out would be to fry an egg for each of us, sprinkle some soy sauce on it and that would go so well with rice.

In the meantime, while I was at the shops, I decided to buy something home for the ladies in the house for their breakfast so I went to this coffee shop and bought the Foochow fried noodles, the moon version…

…for my missus. My missus said there was too much for her so she left a little bit behind and of course, I took it upon myself to finish it off for her. Wow!!! I thought that was so very good…or was it because I had not had that for a while and I missed it so much?

I asked for the char pek koi (fried rice cakes) for my girl but they did not have any that morning so I settled for the fried kway teow…

…instead. Unfortunately. when she woke up, she said she did not have any appetite so she just ate a bit – I put away the rest in the fridge and heated it up the next morning for my own breakfast.

When I asked the guy how much the two would cost, I was somewhat stunned when he told me the total – RM9.50. In the past, those would come up to RM8.00 only, RM4.00 each. I asked him for the breakdown and he said the mee cost RM4.50 and the kway teow was RM5.00 and when I asked him why there was a difference, he said eggs were expensive.

I do not mind a hike in prices – that is only to be expected at a time like this, never mind if it is an increase of 50 sen or a ringgit but I would think that to blame it on eggs is kind of lame, really. I paid RM12.00 for a tray of 30, AA size – if there has been an increase, I sure did not notice. To the most, it has probably gone up by a ringgit or so and that would work out to 40 sen each only so jacking up the price by RM1.00 for a plate of fried kway teow would be pushing it a little bit too far.

And talking about hikes in prices, I went to the shop at the other end of the other block and I saw these dabai…

I drove past the kampung the other day and I saw heaps of these everywhere alongside all the durians, manggis (mangosteen) and so on. It sure looks like they are in season right now but it is only July! All throughout my younger years, the fruit season would be in the landas months around December, the rainy season when we often had floods everywhere.

These black olives did not use to cost so much but lately, the prices that they are asking for are absolutely outrageous. When they first came out a week or so ago, I saw photos on Facebook and I was shocked to see the price tags placed strategically by the side of the baskets – RM40.00 a kilo!!! No, thank you! I would rather not eat! With that kind of money, I can easily go and buy something else a whole lot nicer and enjoy myself to kingdom come!

Well, that morning, they were going for RM25.00 a kilo – the price had gone down, it seemed so I asked for half a kilo as my girl loves dabai so much!!! Yes. I was delighted, when we prepared them that day, that they were very very good, so so lemak, value for money. The worst thing is when you fork out so much only to find that they were not that great and in the end, you have no choice but to throw them all away.

I did share the photograph on Facebook and a friend in Kuching said that they were selling these at some place in the city for RM55.00 a kilo…and yes, I did see another photo taken in Kuching where they were selling them for RM40.00 a kilo…and another one the other day was going for RM35.00 a kilo. It’s a wonder that there ARE people willing to be fleeced like that!