I was away from Kuala Lumpur, and was back in my hometown Kuching, Borneo for more than 2 weeks recently. I went home for the Chinese New Year celebrations with my family. Every time I went home to Kuching, I would embark on my Kolo Mee journey. Those who follow me on my personal Facebook account would know that I post photographs of Kolo Mee every single day I was home without fail. Of course I took some images of them with my camera and I shared them here.
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| According to Wikipedia, Kolo Mee is Sarawakian dish of dry noodles tossed in a savoury pork (or chicken, duck for Halal version) and shallot mixture, topped off with fragrant fried onions originated from the state of Sarawak, characteristically light and tossed in a transparent sauce. |
As you can probably have guessed, Kolo Mee is a beloved food by most Sarawakians. I love it so much, I must have at least one bowl every day. More than one is OK for me too.
While the dish sounds pretty simple and straightforward, there is a difficulty in replicating the exact same taste from regions outside of Sarawak. You can find some food stalls selling Kolo Mee in Kuala Lumpur, for example, and I will be very honest to tell you that those dishes taste nothing like Kolo Mee at all. And some of them taste so bad, I'd rather just cook instant noodles and dine at home. It is a mystery how no one has successfully replicated Kolo Mee outside of Sarawak. Trust me, I have been in Kuala Lumpur for 15 years and I have not found a single dish that claimed to be Kolo Mee here that actually tasted like one.
After several dozens of attempts of finding a genuine Kolo Mee in KL, I gave up, and as you can imagine, I have decided you just could not find one here. If you want an authentic, delicious bowl of Sarawak Kolo Mee, you have to fly there to sample it. You can't access it by land too, Sarawak is in the Northern region of Borneo, which is an island.
Enough about Kolo Mee and my obsession with it. I was home in Kuching for over 2 weeks and I gotta say it was one of the most unproductive time of my life. I knew I was going to have a break from work, no jobs, no client shoots, no YouTube and no content creating for about 2 weeks.
I did hope to be able to go out and maybe do some shutter therapy sessions, but the weather did not permit. We had heavy rain, continuously for the entire duration of time I was there. Some parts of Sarawak, namely Bintulu was badly flooded, thousands of people were evacuated from their homes. While Kuching was generally safe from floods this time around (some parts were flooded), the persistent rain did not do anything to help my itch to shoot some images on the street. Some will say - why not shoot in the rain, you can get good shots! Well, the cameras and lenses may be weather sealed, but I am certainly not, and being sick during the festive seasons, visiting many relatives and friends while in poor health is not something that I want to happen.
I did get to spend a lot of time with mum, so that was a great plus. I also caught up with several friends, you know who you are, and I am grateful for the time. These days, I believe the greatest gift you can spend on someone is your own personal time, and I am blessed to have friends who did make time for me. Chinese New Year was busier than usual, we visited more houses than the years before, catching up with relatives and friends, half of them I personally do not wish to see but family is family and you just have to fake a smile through it all.
After a few days in, I did regret taking such a long break. That is the reality of being a freelancer, the longer you are away from work, the more things will pile up. The emails continued to come in even though I was away, and I was already planning and scheduling work related things up even though I was still in Kuching, supposedly away for my holidays. Technically I did not touch any work during my time home, but I wish I could have done a little bit of work, since the heavy rain just took away most of my street shooting time and I really did not have much else to do.
I am now back to Kuala Lumpur, and I got back on the same day OM Digital Solutions announced their latest OM System OM-3 camera. I have intentionally coordinated my flight to enable to do my usual Thursday Live Streams. It was just coincidental that on that particular day, the OM-3 was released, so I had an immediate hot trending topic to talk about.
Little did I know Rob Trek, a fellow Micro Four Thirds content creator also did his Live Stream at the same time I did, and when he found out from his audience that I was doing my own stream at the same time, he decided to stop his stream and waited for mine to end, before resuming his. You see, I was away for more than 2 weeks, and I have skipped two sessions of Live Streams, so I thought I'd make up for lost times and stay on a bit longer for this one, since we did have quite an interesting topic to talk about. My own Live Stream went on to more than 3 hours, and I felt so bad that Rob Trek had to wait for all that time before he resumed his. While I acknowledge it was not my fault, I did feel bad nonetheless.
There is so much to do now that I am back in Kuala Lumpur. The 2 weeks break has ended. I have burned 3 pre-recorded videos from my buffer list, and I have to continue making new videos to fill it back up again. I have a sponsored video to tackle on, and a few projects to get back to my client too. The February timetable is hectic, but hey, now that I am back, at least I can start working!
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| My favourite "white" Kolo Mee from Kim Joo |
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| Simply the best "Red" Kolo Mee from Oriental Park |
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