"Hey where you, you want lunch?"
"Yea sure."
"ok"
The phone call ended abruptly after a three sentence conversation. This scenario somehow became a daily routine of my stays in Kuching over semester breaks. Short, yes it is, but dad never fails to call back and check whether the big kid at home needs food or not. He'll be coming home from his farms and the call indicates that he's having lunch i suppose. Before i notice it, i'll hear the familiar roar of the old rusty Land Cruiser with its jingles of loose metal from afar and slowly making its park outside the house.
Food container in a plastic bag, in it hides yet another unknown meal of his choice. He'll pass it to me without a word and i'll take it over and head to the kitchen with continuance of his silence. Either it means, there's no need of language to mutual understanding or he's just taking it as a responsibility of care and love. But as for me i really do appreciate it. Although sometimes the menu stays the same for a stretch of a week, but why complain when your daddy buys you food, and you can just eat without thinking of how much the meal cost and how much you owe the buyer :)
Life back home does not need any other adjective besides "great". How great it is to be digging all sorts of food that my hands can reach without having the guilt of finishing other people's food which i usually practice in college. Or flipping the fridge every few minutes as if the contains may multiply according to the times the door opens.
Schedule-less may have been driving me crazy for i'm not use of not having my hours crammed with ridiculous amount of meet-ups and work and play but hey, its Kuching. Its meant to be like that, like how the road traffic here symbolizes how we live our Kuching life, slow and steady.
From the waking up of my biological clock, to the realization that TV actually exists and subsequently indulging in weird Taiwanese shows, how contently meaningless a day may start :) Or be waken by dad at 6 to follow him on his work at the farm, but having plentiful of coffee breaks way before we even reached the farm itself. (Yea people call it orchard but i like the word farm more)
Opening a coffee house or a cafe has always been a dream, since primary school days. I remember writing an essay on how my coffee house concept would be and how my day would start and end as a cafe owner.
Kuching has the best cafes or coffee houses which are usually renovated from old shop lots like the comic above. The longitudinal shape of the cafes may limit the creativity of its interior but they never fail to captivate me with their distinct decor and concepts along with their fancy drinks besides latte and mochas of the sort.
Feels real to be home, living life as it is and sipping coffee 3 times a day. Or having no worries over paying for food or transportation, even having a fixed line phone is something to be happy for. Somehow i've been receiving wrong calls from aunties who gets so shy when they've realize they dialed the wrong number, cute :) And the familiar ringing tone of a house phone just makes you feel home, doesn't it? :)
Kuching the cat city, may be boring at times where you just can't think of anywhere to go. There's less than a handful of fast food chain and cinemas or shopping complexes to hang out in. But don't ask whether Kuching's better than KL, cause home's always the best place to be :)
and there's plenty of coffee houses you see :)
