Random Old Memories...

So basically the boring stuffs are over. Now for the goodies. Recently, whenever I remember or recall something in the present time it somehow leads me to old memories related to the particular thing I was trying to recall.


The fork and spoon thing, reminds me of my very very very old childhood life. Now that I mention this, to tell you the truth I don't actually remember my childhood life during the time when I was 1 year old to 3 years old. I only have a good memory of myself when I am 4 years old and older. I mean I had pictures of myself when I was 1 to 3 years old but I don't recall them very much. Especially the one with the birthday cake when I was 2 years old.


Now many don't know this but when I was a baby I couldn't stand when I reach 2 years old. My parents got pretty worried and they asked a doctor to check but there really is nothing wrong with me. Soon around 2 years plus I actually did stand and walk. Weird huh?


Hmm... what else. When I think about childhood times the most famous food that I can think of is instant noodles. Yes I was already eating instant noodles at that time. I remembered I had this deep plate that looks like a cross between a plate and a bowl. Red on the outside surface and white on the inside. I always have my noodles in that. Then I would be sitting on the table ... yes you heard me on the table and eating noodles with a tiny fork. Then I kind of advanced pretty fast and used chopsticks at a pretty young age hah. The chopsticks was dark brown with designs on the upper part of the chopsticks. Yes I still remember how they looked like.


Next thing would be my eating habit. According to my mom, not me, my mom... I stop liquid or milk diet at a very young age. I ate rice and solids roughly around 2 or 3 I think. Of course it started with porridge and stuff but yeah I went on to eat rice after that. Of course I still have my daily dose of the bottle during the afternoons. I would have this favourite mattress. It's thin, homemade mattress with a comfortable soft batik-designed cover. And I would have my naps and also have my bottle of milk on it. Heck I even bring it to my baby-sitter's place.


Yes I had a baby-sitter. More like a guardian actually. You see my dad used to teach in the morning, he teaches morning classes and my mom used to teach afternoon till evening. So there will be this particular period of time when I will be all by myself at home (excluding my brother and sister, they are busy with school and stuff) and basically it's best that I stay with the guardian during that period of time. So my daily routine would be to be at home for the morning part of the day and when my mom is going to school she would drop me at the aunty's place which is roughly around 100 meters aways or so and basically I would stay there till when my dad is free or evening when my mom comes home. Later on when I was in kindergarten I started my day at the kindergarten and my dad would fetch me to the guardian and I would stay there till evening sometimes.


Usually I bring food there. My mom would give me a box of the particular day's dishes and rice and I would bring it there to eat. On occasion I get to taste the aunty's cooking. The most memorable would be her fried rice. God it was black. Hahaha, seriously I think she got her dark soy sauce for free or something, it's almost a dark brown. Nevertheless it tasted great. Grains were dry and each grain is coated evenly and they don't stick to each other and stuff. Emm...


My mom used to cook during the weekends and evening. For the day time we usually catered. I remembered one dish from the caterer, the famous Lala (a type of shellfish) cooked with small chilies. Emmmm... tasty. Well basically that's the only thing I remembered about the catered food. And oh yea my family hated it cause at one time I don't know why but there is always the frequent appearance of ikan bilis and peanuts cooked in sweet spicy sauce thing. I got sick of it. But it was not bad. Just don't like having it too many times.


Lastly my mom's cooking. Not the best in the world or anything extra special. But they are just too darn tasty. There is just too many dish I can recall that tasted great that it would fill another full post just by naming them. OK fine I will name a few. I remember all the spicy dish, kangkung or okra fried with sambal belacan, sambal belacan and lime dip, sambal salted fish, curry chicken, dark soy chicken with herbs, tom yam, baked beans with assorted stuff (I don't know what to call it), ju hu char (a hokkien dish which literally means stir fry dry squid strips, though it's mainly consist of jicama or sengkuang, carrots, onions and mushrooms cut into thin strips and cooked with dried squid strips, chicken meat and prawn, mainly it looks like popiah filling) and also the original fried fish coated with tamarind and stuffed with paste consisting of turmeric as the main ingredient (originally if I am not mistaken this dish originated from a dish where fish is stuffed with sambal not turmeric). That is just to name a FEW of the dishes I can recall.


These are just cooked dishes, I haven't got to pastries and cookies and cakes. Hmmm... but I guess everyone get the picture now. Well I should stop here. This is basically the food part of my old memories of home. Sigh how I wish I could taste them again or better yet learn to cook them myself. Nowadays my mom don't get a chance to cook this kind of stuff since the whole family is staying in an apartment so it's not a good idea to cook oily frying type of food unless you want to spend the rest of the day cleaning the whole house.



I remember I used to hang out in the kitchen a lot. When I was not in school and my mom is at home she would be preparing food in the kitchen and I would be there to help with easy task like peeling onions and potatoes, make sambal belacan with a mortar and pestle (that was a freaking hard work... and painful for the eyes too), stir the pots and wok while my mom prepares the ingredients, shell prawns, fry omelette's and a lot more actually. Yup I liked to help in the kitchen. If it's not for my IT-related interest, my dad and aunt used to say I could become a chef... or so they say.

I guess this post is getting too long... I better stop. There is just too much memories that we don't cherish at times just cause they were normal and uninteresting compared to the time I probably did sky diving and the time I might have almost died. Then again thinking back to this normal times, I felt that somehow I missed it very much and how I wish I could go through it all over again. It's just amazing how much I recall from a simple thing as a fork and spoon. I could have written tonnes of post with just the food part of my memories. I guess I should stop now. Seriously I should stop babbling all the time. Must learn how to control and arrange my post. Hah.