Sekeping roti..

This is what I read the week before last week.. as usual all novels finished within one-seating while the more-serious stuff has to be carried forward til now - aside from other readings.

..and inflasi

Had roti canai for breakfast earlier this morning (& every other day lately). First customer, indeed I was early when in fact I’d already deliberately delayed from getting out of the house. Did you realize how much price had increased over the years? A roti canai costs me 70sen today compared with a mere 20sen back when I was around 10 years old – over a total of 21 odd years. How can I remember that salient point? My weekly allowance amounted to RM2 to cover both sekolah pagi & sekolah petang (religious school) during upper primary school. The money was given to me earlier in the week so I had to budget accordingly. My bro#3 told me that he used to spend the money within 2,3 days and just drank pipe water for the rest of the week (typical guys eh? Always hungry for more..). When I was in lower primary school, mak used to tie up the 20sen daily allowance at the corner of a handkerchief –where got wallet or purse like today’s kids? Cannot remember much about morning session but what I do remember was sometimes during break at the afternoon school, a group of us kids will be running to the shops (quite a distance away according to our chubby legs) to buy/tapao roti canai with kuah. That was the rare occasion when I got to eat my own roti canai – straight from the plastic. Unlike now– our family breakfast fares tend to be endless days of goreng pisang/cekodok pisang/lepat pisang (or substitute -with ubi kayu) since we had them in abundance as my dad planted them around the house & at the ladang, sometimes alternate with nasi goreng (leftover rice from the night before). BTW, one of my bro really anti-terung until today since that was another one of our staple food. 20sen also bought me a fulfilling mee or meehoon goreng sold by one of the ustazahs. A kueh costed only 10sen (or is it 5sen? compared to today’s cheapest at 30sen or 3 for RM1! (Recently ter’bought a kueh traditional at RM2 per piece-Serik!)

Well, backed to that roti canai. My way of eating it has to be roti canai dituang kuah banyak2 – Ha, biar kembang sikit…mak (as recently as last 2 week) said I’m exactly like my late ayah! Long ago, she had argued with ayah about it since that means she or anyone else couldn’t share (cheaper price but more in terms of quantity) the roti- yucky! So what normally happened, I was the one (out of many siblings) who gets to enjoy the roti kembang when ayah came back from ladang! Ha, should I mention again that I’m anak ayah? Heheheh…Ayah also liked roti canai drizzled with coarse sugar. Sometimes evaporated milk too.

Another example of the price hike – aside from the blood-curdling petrol price, toll charges, etc. Sate Kajang –when I was one of the organizers for a student party about 2 or 3 years back, it costed only 40sen per piece. Now, it costs 60sen! You can get a cheaper one at the night market la but with only 3 miserable & minuscule cutting of meat per piece. Not to mention the not-worth mentioning kuah kacang! BTW, don’t forget to eat your sate along with the cucumber. Why? Here is the logic – our sate is barbecued right? Using charcoal (Is there any other way? Sate goreng isn’t the same, talking from experience here). So, think of the amount of carbon dioxide that surrounded the sate during the entire cooking process! That is why sate is carcinogenic! By eating cucumber, or other fresh greens hopefully they’ll immediately offset the bad effect of eating sate esp. burnt ones. (Source: Internet or email received)

Reminiscence makes me kinda sad…

(Update: One of my friend's ayah passed away on 1st January -found out today. She's closer to him than the mother. Her being an eldest in the family, I can only imagine the emotional upheaval that she's going through...Al-Fatihah.

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"Aji, aku mau nikah sama kamu!" YES2x! (What happened last Fri)

Er, that was the msg I send to my hsemate - she missed the one episode of Mutiara Hati (tv9 6-7pm Mon-Fri - My current fav, this is way different from the other sinetron Bwg Merah Bwg Putih ok! ) where the daughter (Nabila) is trying to teach the very-shy ayah (Aji Dermawan) on how to propose to the future step-mom (Ibu Guru yg Manis, Arini). The girl always met the real mummy in dream & she was told about how mummy proposed to ayah. So, that explained the line above...

What I couldn't explained was the horror when my 8 year-old nephew read my in-box msgs!! I had teach him earlier on how to play the game on my phone & he actually wanted to msg his dad..aiyoyo!