Weekly menu

Lately there have been a lot of feasting, a lot of good food being served and most times we over indulged ourselves. All this good food reminded me of my first couple of years in SMK Serian. That was the time when I either survive on cream cracker biscuits and instant mee or join the teachers staying in another quarters for my meals. I had very simple meals then.

I could not expect much as I paid only RM30.00 per month for two meals a day, four days a week. It was actually only RM25.00 but I paid an extra RM5.00 for meat which one of the teachers was not required to pay since she told the rest that she could do without meat. So it was only four of us paying for meat and that meant tenggiri (mackerel) and luncheon meat. There was no chicken or any other meat on the menu. So it was fried tenggiri for Mondays and Wednesdays and luncheon meat on Tuesdays and Thursdays served with two vegetable dishes. The vegetables were sawi (Chinese mustard), white stem 'pek chai', long beans, french beans, canned sweet corn, canned green peas, dried radish fried with eggs and occasionally we had brinjal or ladies' fingers.

The reason for the occasional dish of brinjal which was normally fried with eggs was because one of the teachers does not take brinjal as she was told by someone that brinjal is not good for the skin while the volunteer service teacher who's British doesn't take ladies' fingers and the reason given in her own words: "Who wants to take something which is like the slime that comes out from the nose?" What can all those ladies' fingers lovers out there say to that? It was definitely a tough job trying to cater to each and everyone likes and dislikes.

The weekly menu was the same but luckily for me, I'm not picky about my food. My grandma taught my siblings and I since we were small kids not to be picky about our food otherwise, we would face problem when we leave home to work elsewhere. My grandma had never ventured out to work; she married my grandfather when she was sweet sixteen and yet she showed such wisdom.

I had no complain at all about the food and in fact I enjoyed every meal. Why not, when it was definitely much better than having biscuits and milk or instant mee! Besides, I didn't have to sweat over the cooking; even the marketing was done by those teachers when they were back in Kuching during the weekends. They also shared their fruits either bananas (usually pisang rajah) or the local oranges with me. What more could I have asked for.

In my opinion, it doesn't matter if the meal is simple or the menu is the same every week. As long as the company is right, the meal will be an enjoyable one.