Another day, long and hard on the grind with the rat race almost literally. Traffic jam on the Federal Highway was at a standstill. Gridlock. Traffic was actually…or how should I put it…? “Honestly, traffic was moving…slowly….real slowly… To put the speed in perspective, a snail moving in reverse gear, but heading in the same direction as us… was moving much faster. Again, I am influenced by Turbo.

Notice the words, “actually” and “honestly”? The English language has an uncanny way of putting a person in a spot.😁😂😇

When our (my wife, Jeannie’s and mine) daughter, Laura; was in her growing up days, we used to go to the movies fairly often. We had a couple of rules as to what type of movies we watched. One was with the promotion of family values. The second was no violence. The world is full of violence and hate already, we did not want to highlight what was already there.

We took Laura to watch many movies like “CARS”, “ALICE IN WONDERLAND”, “WALL-E”, TURBO”…and many comedy movies….you get my drift.

So, now you know who “Turbo” is….

Back to the traffic snarl. It is incomprehensible that people in vehicles are subjected to this grueling grind day in / day out…with no clear solution anywhere in the near future. Look at who’s talking (typing with the only sound coming from the thumping of the keys on the Logitech keyboard, and the reactive sound [something like a “cluck”, more like a “wooden cluck” sound] from the keys on the keyboard as they are typed / hit and returned to their original positions before being typed). I / we are in the jams everyday. However, today seemed like one where the traffic jammers were going to camp the night on the road itself.

We got off the Federal Highway after a couple of kilometers of inching our way forward, and headed towards Section 13. We turned off at the intersection just before Jaya Shopping Centre and headed towards SS3. (1) Traffic was heavy but it was moving. We decided to have our dinner instead of wading through the sea of motor vehicles. I intended to go to the area where there were several rows of shops with a choice of restaurants to choose from.

We did lots of left and right turns, and some travel in the lorong(s) (Bahasa Malaysia for lane or alley [but we did not drive in alleys]) and got onto SS3/31 when Laura recognised a restaurant which served a decent chicken cop meal. We decided that would be our dinner, which would give us a break from what would seem another hour, at least; according to Waze; to get home. We got a parking spot fairly easily.

This area brought back memories of 50 years ago, when I, together with my siblings – Jennifer, Nigel, Terence, Malcolm; and cousins – Richard, Neil, Judy-Ann, Audra and Darren; would often stay at almost every holiday (especially the long ones) with the happening couple, Aunty Val and Uncle Jeff & their sons, Brendon and Shenton in their home in Section 22/56 (now SS3/56). That was our holiday camp, where “fun” was the buzz word. So many fond memories. One of them was that Uncle Jeff took us fishing one day. Behind these shops at that time was just rubber tree estates. That’s it. This particular day was just after a fairly heavy rain downpour had stopped. We walked fairly deep in the plantation and came to a small pond. We caught some catfish there. We were thrilled. Ordinarily, our parents would not have given us the permission to go in to the estates. But Uncle Jeff and Aunty Val got away with lots of mischief and we were always let off the hook (pun? – fishing🤔😇😂).

Laura led us to a corner, intermediate restaurant, “Restoran Kuan Yew”. It occupied two shoplots. The place was nearly empty though the time was about 7.00pm. Here, “Michael’s Chicken Chop” stall operates. The “chef” is Michael (for obvious reasons). This stall is supposed to serve possibly the cheapest chicken chop around.

Laura and Jeannie ordered the basic (I think) chicken chop which came with the normal dressing. I went for the black pepper dressing / sauce version. Here was an usual system where when one makes an order, a plastic cup with an alphabet letter is given. At other restaurants, you are given a coloured cup (plastic, of course) a number tag; or for a more upmarket stall; an electronic beeper (which will go off when your order is ready for you to collect at the counter).

We picked a table quite easily😉as there were only a couple of tables out of about 30 tables, occupied.

Our cup had the letter “p” on it. “P”, a lady from the counter in a distant front, called out; signaling that our meal was ready. Laura and Jeannie went to get the order while I was putting words down for another article on my Samsung Fold 5 screen.

When Laura was making the food order, she asked me if I wanted coleslaw to go with my order. Thinking that it would cheaper without it, I opted not having it. When the meals came, Laura said the price of RM18.00 (US$4.15) included the coleslaw if I chose to have it (Jeannie did). The coleslaw looked good.

Our meals came with a decent size of chicken serving, each; and some nice fries. There are some establishments where the fries are terribly ordinary or below standard. It was the gravy dressing poured over the chicken chops, that differentiated the meals. Each meal also came with a couple of packets of chili sauce. Chili sauce??? With chicken chop… prepared this way?

My black pepper sauced chicken chop was ok. You can tell that it’s the black pepper version. The gravy was a darker version than the basic(?), and it was peppered with… why, pepper of course. The chicken chop was much better than those places where they stick chicken pieces together to form one main piece. When you start eating it, you don’t have to cut through it, it literally breaks into pieces.

I tasted a piece of Laura’s chicken chop biasa (“Ordinary” in Bahasa Malaysia). It tasted better than the black pepper version. For the price of RM18.00, serving as lunch to the working crowd during days, this probably is a good choice if you are into something different from the noodles or rice meals. The time taken from order to serve the meal, was decently quick; meaning that Michael is conscious of the working crowd’s limited lunchtime.

We were hoping that the traffic jam would have dispersed by the time we reconnected to the Federal Highway. It had not. However, traffic was moving and it did not take us too long to get home. I wonder… should I create my own spicy black pepper sauce recipe which I would like people to taste a decent amount of black pepper in the sauce itself?

NOTES:
1. Section 13 and SS3 are located in the city of Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.