Breakfast & Memories.....

Someone used to tell me that breakfast is the single most important meal of the day. It is the start of the day and you want to have a good breakfast before you move on for the day. The other day, my family had breakfast at Sathy's house in Banting. I remembered that I woke up quite early that morning and here was Sathy's mom, preparing breakfast for us and our friends, BA & Jessy. Gosh! I could imagine the early hours she must have woken up to prepare the meals. We had "ithali" and "putu mayam" that morning with chicken curry and some sweet stuff for the putu mayam. Yunno, it's has been a long time since I tasted some really good home-made stuff. I guess, I must say, I really enjoyed the breakfast. The other wonderful surprise was the half-boiled kampung chicken eggs. Always fresh and probably the best in town-lar! Just love the taste, though I am constantly reminded by Vive that Sathy's mom has lost about RM 6.00 worth of kampung eggs of income that day!!!!! Ha......ha......ha......
Yunno, simple kampung life is really something that I missed a lot. Fresh air, no need to be fussy and a whole lot of greenery before your eyes makes it a real relaxing place. The wonderful part of Sathy's home in Banting is that chickens and ducks roamed freely in their oil palm land. Not forgetting monitor lizards, snakes and birds too! Chatting up with Auntie Ellama [ Sathy's mom ] that day brought a lot of good childhood memories flooding my brains thus sending sentimental feelings to my heart. Yeah! I missed the kampung days whereby we would catch ikan betuk, ikan Sepat Siam, ikan keli, frogs and what not from the paddy fields, enjoying the morning breeze and the meeting of friends at the paddy fields. Yeah! Life was simpler then, right? Well, it just goes to show what quality of life we are having nowadays. I am not complaining of the progress and development ; merely missing the good ol' days. Lots of people tell me that we've got to change with the flow of time but my question is " what change? " and "what flow?" I don't think our children of today even know one bit about what our traditional games are. I don't think that our children even know what were our traditional food too. Don't even go to our traditional culture thing - that's even far away. Call me an old school idiot but these are things that are......US! If we continue to forget and erode on a daily basis these things, we'll probably raise up cyber children in the next few years. So much for "follow the flow, bro and change!"

In many ways, we do have to change accordingly and there will always be pros and cons on this matter. For me, I just want to saviour whatever simple life I can and get my children involved in it. At least, in that way, they too could one day tell their children that they too had saviour and sample some form of the old days lifestyle.

Allow me to give you an example of what we've been missing all these years. Of course, my favourite would be on food. Let's take the nyonya kuih for example. Wow! I really love my aunties kuih muih sessions especially my dad's eldest sister specials. In those days, we used to sample treats like pulut tekan, wajik, ondeh-ondeh, making kaya and the list goes on. But today, how many could actually say that they could concoct out such beautiful fares? I am not talking about the commercial nyonya kuih. We have plenty of that in the streets but I am talking about taking the trouble to pass on such culinary skills to our younger ones. Even simple fares like laksa, pong teh, Hainanese chicken rice, lor bak, assam fish head, beef rendang, chicken varival, Indian fish cutlet and so on - just to name a few. BTW, even simple fare lke sambal belacan is lowly coming into extinct. These are the food fares that I have enjoyed over my young days and I really want my children and the generation to come to sample this or else, the skills will just continue to be diluted, compromised and eventually disappear altogether.

Today, allow me to take you down memory lane. Try remembering a game you used to play, the food you used to eat and the kuih you enjoyed the most. Ask yourself this: Are they still as good as you used to have it or it is different now? Well, you could start by making a difference. Try sharing with your children the simpler things in life. Their reaction will probably shock you but it's a start. At least, you'll understand what I am tryingto get at!~