Kampua Talk

Have you ever wondered what really happened behind the machine every time you withdraw money from the ATM, petrol pump, washing machine, vending machines, etc? It might not be what you imagined.

ATM

Coffee vending machine

Cigarette vending machine

Petrol pump

Instant photo taking machine

Laundry

LOL! Life is indeed too short for the wrong job.

Jay Chou is going to release a new album (called Capricorn) soon, 9th October, to be exact. His new song, Fragrance of Rice (Dao Xiang), is nice. I like the song! It’s soothing to the ears and calming to the soul. LOL! Seriously.

I like Jay’s song. His songs are all meaningful and one can relate to the song in one way or another. I started listening to Jay Chou since secondary school. His song has been there accompanying me when I was preparing to sit for the many head-breaking exams in school, when I was in my first relationship, when I was having my first break up (and a few break ups after that), when I quarrelled with my boyfriends, when I was travelling, when I was about to fall asleep, when I was procrastinating in doing my assignments through the night, etc.

I practically grew up to his songs! It’s nostalgic sometimes when listening to his old songs but they are still nice songs. Yeah, I have all his albums, shut up! And I can karaoke to most of his songs

Last weekend, I went to a series of talk at church given by Dr. Jeffery Goh from Kuching who also wrote his latest book

Yeah, the talks are mostly about some Christianity stuff that most of you might not be interested in anyway

Autograph - the one on the left is Dr. Goh’s signature and the one on the right was signed by his wife, Angelina.

There was a tea break on the Saturday afternoon session, so I went to Eden’s Corner which was a stone throw away from the church for a drink. My uncle wanted some Kompia…

Or like how a stall at Kuching’s BDC Expert put it, the “Foochow Burger”! The meat in the middle was minced pork. They were not that good but beggars can’t be choosers

Kompia is a simple salted dough, baked in traditional open oven [Suituapui, 2008] and is available all over Sibu. The famous place for kompia in Sibu is the Tiong Hua Road stall but my mom said there’s nothing special, really, about the kompia there and I have no comment on that because I haven’t been there. Well, maybe they are over-rated. Some people even sang praises of that place by saying that it sells the most authentic and best kompia in the world *rolls eyes* How can you tell that other place in Sibu are not selling the authentic kompia? They stick the same salted dough into the same traditional oven as well. And they taste like kompia. *shrug*

I am not a big fan of kompia even though this is one of Sibu’s signature food besides kampua. They taste really good fresh from the oven. I don’t like a few hours old kompia because I don’t like wrestling the kompia with my teeth. Oh, and there are kompia available at Taman Selera Muhibbah, the coffee shop below Teknik tuition school, etc. I don’t know about you but I don’t have any preference when it comes to kompia.

I like the month of Ramadhan, of all the months in the year because during this whole month, there is a Ramadhan Bazaar in town selling all types of delicious food that you don’t normally get any other time. My uncle called and ajak me to go to the bazaar with him so we went to the Town Square (Phase II) for our dinner-hunt before the after-office-hour crowd throng the place.

Thunderstorm hit Sibu this afternoon and even though the weather was nice for our dinner-hunt, the bazaar was surrounded by muddy puddle all over the place

The place is not tarred and hence the water and mud puddle all over the place when it rained. I wore a pair of flip flops so I wasn’t that worried. The first stall I saw was the drink stall selling a variety of colourful drinks

Moving on, the next stall was selling ikan bakar (grilled fish)

They just started grilling the stingray. Also on the same stall, I spotted another man grilling some…

Jiu Hu Eng Chai or Sotong Kangkong or Kangkong Squid, and some other type fish that I couldn’t recognize

This same stall sells some other food like petai, rice, pulut panggang and umai (I think) but we were more interested in the ikan bakar. My uncle bought a piece of grilled stingray.

Moving on, I could smell apam balik right after we left the ikan bakar stall because I love apam balik. The apam balik stall sells two types of apam balik.

The thick-skinned apam balik which they called “Apam Bali Special” are selling for RM2.50 per piece. I don’t really like this thick-skinned type. I prefer the other type…

The crispy type apam balik which has thin skin and they are really crispy. With lots of peanut sprinkled inside, that was a piece of heaven in your mouth! I bought 5 pieces for RM2.00

I spotted the kebab stall right across the apam balik stall! I walked around to look for the famous Ferry Kebab but it wasn’t there so I returned to this stall and bought a chicken kebab. I wanted mixed kebab but it was too early and I could still see that the beef wasn’t cooked yet.

A stall selling otak otak, pais udang and the sort. I didn’t buy any after I read Suituapui’s review.

A stall selling a variety of jelly, cakes and…

…kuih.

A stall selling different types of curry, vegetables and other dishes to take with your rice. I saw some umai but I was scared that it wasn’t fresh so I didn’t buy any.

Then it was time…to walk through the smokiest stretch of stalls at the bazaar…

Satay on the right and chicken butt (or if you prefer, Bishop’s nose) on the left

The Malay lady who owned this stall could speak Foochow very well! Seeing me taking pictures of her satay, she asked, “Ai dik no miang? Oo satay, oo hotdog, oo kie nik, ai dik no miang?” (What do you want to buy? Got satay, got hotdog, got chicken, which one do you want?)

BBQ Chicken

Smoke gets in your eyes, hair, clothes, pants and digicam!

Lemang (rice cooked in bamboo)

Another stall selling ikan bakar spotted. These are sardines.

Terubuk Mukah - RM15

The so-called famous fish from Mukah with a lot of tiny bones.

We left right before the after-office-hour crowd came! I’m definitely going to this bazaar again as I haven’t found what I’ve been craving for yet

Let’s head over to Kuching and see how different the Ramadhan bazaar there is as compared to ours. Alvin has blogged about the famous Satok Bazaar which was featured in the local daily some time ago! How come they don’t have Sup Power here? I love that soup! Yeah, I know, it’s like giving dead cow a blow job but screw it (pun not intended), I just love it (the soup, not the blow job)!

I had Guinness Stout during dinner

I’m not an alcoholic and having this for dinner is not a good idea. Yea, I bluffed, most of you must have guessed it, this Guinness Stout look alike drink is called Arthur Wee Kopi O - I actually ordered it like that! The taukayneo (lady boss) laughed and nodded her head when I said the name of the drink. Oh, and she served the drink to where I was seated herself! *damn kembang*

Only Ruby serves drink named after Suituapui. I dined and blogged about this restaurant a couple of times already and I walked away satisfied, each time! You can find the posts here and here. I ordered about the same food from my previous visits but I don’t think you are going to click on the links anyway (because I normally don’t click also. Heheh!), so I’m going to post the pictures (not the same ones but same food lar) here. Suituapui went to Ruby’s the night before I went, click here to see what he ordered! Different from what I ordered

We had fried mee sua - like how Suituapui put it, the “unrivalled”. I agree with him because I have yet to eat any fried mee sua better than this place!

Sea cucumber soup

The specialty of the house, Pandan Chicken. I’ve blogged about this, so no need for me to elaborate.

Sweet and sour fish fillet

Butter Cheese Kailan - I have a comment this time. I love this dish when I had it during my previous visits but this time, the kailan they use was a bit too old and hence it was quite hard to chew.

The must-have, the incomparable Butter Scotch Prawns! Suituapui, who went the night before, told me that they had this with prawn balls instead, that is without the shell, and it was very nice. I didn’t say that when I called to place my order but I told the taukayneo I didn’t want shell on my prawns only when I reached the restaurant for dinner. Therefore, I don’t think this is the same butter scotch prawn balls that Suituapui had.

Mayonnaise Lamb - Ruby does it best! ‘nuf said!

Bittergourd with salted egg - So this time I finally tasted it for myself. Suituapui complained that nobody wanted this every time we went there even though he claimed that it was nice! Okay, so it was really nice. Not bitter like its name indicated. You win, Arthur!

I don’t know if this is tradition or what but after handling TWO funerals this year, there were after-funeral lunch each time at Cheng Siang Leu Restaurant (opposite Sacred Heart School)

Food served here has nothing to shout about. If you’re hungry, anything to fill your stomach would be good enough.

Soup

I don’t know what they call this. There are deep-fried hard-boiled eggs in the soup of some cabbage and carrot, sprinkled with spring onions. It tastes like boiling water sprinkled with black pepper. That’s all. I only ate the egg. ’nuff said.

The mix

There are four types of different food on this dish. Clockwise from left: mixed vegetables, fried yam, asparagus and fishroll. I love the asparagus, not for the aphrodisiac characteristic lar, what were you thinking. It was fresh. The fried yam was very crunchy and yummy but I am not a big fan of yam. The mixed vegetables consists of carrot, baby corn, ham, black fungus, etc. And the fish roll tastes suspiciously similar to fish ball, only longer in size.

Sweet and sour fish

For some reasons, the fish they served was not entirely cooked and hence there were weird taste and we didn’t finish this dish. I think this is the only dish that we didn’t manage to finish.

Mixed vegetable

I kinda like this. There are mushroms, cockles (without the shell), brocolli, carrot, etc.

Roasted chicken

Then came the sinful dish. For reasons unknown, everyone at my table fought for the skin! This dish was gone in minutes! Can you imagine that?

Then came the most sinful dish of all! Man Tao with pork and vegetable. The Man Tao was deep fried and hence the golden brown exterior. It was really nice. I like! However, I don’t really fancy the pork though. It was really fatty. It would be a totally different story if the pork was roasted to crispiness. But the Man Tao is seriously nice!

That was the last dish before we were being served fruits for dessert. I don’t think I have to put up a picture of a plate of pinapples and watermelons lar.