Recently in Sibu Category

It hasn't been an hour since I arrived at Sibu and I hate it already. I'm sorry to say it, but I hate Sibu. I hate everything about it.

Sibu is just so...Chinese. I can't read or write Chinese so the Chinese signs irks me. I'm starting to loathe this place and the people.

I don't know why or how I got this way. Perhaps I'm in my depressive mood and the sheer Sibu-ness of Sibu just gets to me. I don't think I can stay here and work.

It hasn't been an hour and I already abhor the idea of staying here.

I don't know if Sibu has changed (probably not) or it's me who's changed but I can't stand it anymore.

I didn't know it was possible to change someone in a month, Steph.

I hate it when Sibu people don't wait until people get out of an elevator before pushing in.

I used to do that too coz I'm from Sibu and I'm supposed to be rude and uncouth (or did I pick up the elevator trick from KL?).

Did my Sibu-ness drive you away? I'll never know coz you're not answering my calls.

I hate Sibu.

The pure, unadulterated Chinese-ness of this place is depressing and it's driving me insane.

...or maybe I just hate MYSELF.

This is going to be a short one as I have to wake up real early tomorrow morning to catch my flight. Anyway, I'm still in Sibu now, decided to go for the RM 13 per kg of crab craze that everyone in Sibu is talking about for dinner just now. The place is Hong Fu Seafood Restaurant and Cafe, and Jesus Christ was it packed!

There were people in tables lined right along the row of shophouses, extending to the very (unlit) end. I asked for a table for two and the guy had to roll out a new table from the store room and advised me that my order would take quite a while as the long line of tables (as far as the eyes can see) has not been served yet. I decided to call it off and went to the seafood place behind it called Sweet Family Seafood instead.

The food there was alright, and the service terrible, but I still wanted to try the RM 13 per kg of crab mania that seems to be sweeping through the residents of Sibu from the looks of it. Hong Fu is the place that's doing that and it's a big crowd puller...we saw people eating just crabs for fun, it was crazy, the amount of people there. I would avoid SF and go to Hong Fu instead.

I just came back and decided to light up a couple of sparklers that I bought this afternoon while out shopping with my gf.

It's the old skool type of sparkler - wire with a coating on top that produces sparks very similar to what white phosphorus (WP) burns like. The instructions on the sparker packaging advices immersion of the spent sparklers in water to prevent spontaneous reigniting, reinforcing my belief that it's a WP or a substance containing WP.

It burns bright (white high intensity flame) and fragmented bits of it can burn the exposed skin. It has interesting potential as a source for harvesting cheap (got the sparkers in packs of 10 for RM 1) WP as a potentiator in Molotov cocktails (not that I have anything to do with those of course).

Well...my break in Sibu is over, I'm going to take a shit, get some sleep and fly back to Kuching again tomorrow.

This is the place my late paternal grandfather used to bring a bunch of us kids to eat on Sundays. It's the central heart of Heng Hua Sibu and things here have been kept relatively the same. People of all sorts come here - white collar workers and blue collar workers all eat here, there's no distinction. I went there for an very early breakfast with a couple of people just now.

It has the best coffee in town; I estimate the caffeine content as the equivalent of a double shot of Starbucks espresso. I love the homely feel of the place - people can bring their own food if they want (see the photo of the tapioca in the middle). Tapioca tastes great with coffee. The place also has the best fried-cooked noodles (char chu mien, a Foochow dish) in Sibu. It's noodles which are fried, and then recooked in a soup dish.

Breakfast at Sungai Merah is nostalgic, and the patrons just keep on coming in, it's always full. Look at the industry going on with the industrial sized cooking air outlet!

Sungai Merah will always remain as the heart of Sibu to me.