My rememberer

I notice that my forgetter is working overtime now, but my rememberer is working good as well. They are however work best at different time zone.

I forget what i wanted to do 3 minutes ago, but I remember clearly what happen when i was a child. Is this normal?

As i was sitting at some nice comfortable place, I entertained my wondering mind. I remember those days when I was a child. There was this incident so long ago that made me so humble and taught me a very good way to appreciate what I have.


I was at a boarding school, and during term break we got to ride the train for 24 hours to get home for 3 weeks. During those term break i always hang out with my former primary school friends. I would cycle for a few miles just to visit them and they would come and sleep over as well. I don't remember sleeping over too much, but I have friends slept over at my house (grandparents) all the time.

There was one time I was invited to break fast and dinner at one of my close friends house. I was happy to go and i guess my friend was happy to have me as I hardly go eat dinner at peoples' houses very often. I was humbled to see what was on the table for breaking the fast. There was only 2 dishes or was it 3. I remember there were 3 fried fish, a bowl of sayur lemak kangkong and sambal belacan. The rice came and it was cold and it was the leftover. I loved the food, but i realised that there were 7 of us. They wanted me to start, so i did, luckily I could compute that the 3 fried fish were not meant for me to get one for myself. They have to be shared between 7 people.

I went home after that and told my grand mother about how meager the dinner fare was. There was no kueh and sweets for breaking the fast like we had at home and we had to share 3 fish between 7 of us. I think my grand parents were a bit excessive with food on the table especially during the fasting month. We never have leftover rice for dinner, it had to be freshly cooked. We usually have a few dishes on the table to go with the rice. There is normally be a curry (meat or chicken or fish) Fried fish or chicken or beef and vegetables and sambal and acar rampai or acar ikan (ikan masak cuka). There is always the dadih manis or agar-agar for dessert. During the fasting month there would be table full of kueh2. Buah melaka, tepung bungkus, plus the usual desserts and of course there would be pisang mas and tembikai.

My grandmother would outsource the making of these kueh2, she would provide the flour, sugar and coconut to neighbours and in the evening, we would have them for breaking fast. My grandmother would cook all those beef, lamb, mutton, chicken and fish dishes. I love pesamah kambing or lembu. I love kari kepala ikan plotan and isi.

Well, what i was getting at was that in the late 1950's, 60's and 70's, there were a lot of poor households in my village. I never realized that until that dinner at my friend's house. I did not know that i had such a privileged childhood.