The 'Jambu Air'

It's really been a tiring week and my workload is still the same. And the darn load looks like it's piling up even more ... sigghhhh ... I'm still not done with my work yet and am at this point of time totally exhausted both mentally and physically. But I need a break and so I decided to just dump all my work aside for a little bit and take a breather and see what's been happening around the blogsphere.

I don't even want to begin to talk about how much work I still have waiting for me cos it'll only depress me even further. Lets just say I'll probably be busy till about the time the world starts to end! Damn those pesky clients for ruining my social life. Not that I had any to begin with ... LOL!

You know, I never realized that sometimes we take the things around us, such as fruits for granted.

'Fruits, Nick???'

Ok, before you all start thinking that maybe I'm losing it from working non-stop the past week or so, let me explain myself a little here. And no, it's not going to be one of those long winded explanations. I don't have the energy to be so long winded today.

This afternoon or rather just before lunch time, wifey called me and said to get some 'jambu air' literally translated as water apple or scientifically known as eugenia aquea on the way home for lunch. I knew the mini vegetable mart across the road from my place sold these fruits and popped by there to get her some.


But I was shocked at the price of it. It cost me RM7.90 for 4 miserable pieces! And it's not like it's any exotic fruit or anything. Back when I was a kid growing up, the place I lived had a tree growing the fruit albeit the green version and we could eat the fruit at any time to the point we got fed up of eating it. We even gave permission to the neighbours to just come into our yard and pluck as many as they wanted.

If I had known I could charge so much for the fruit, I would have taken the tree with me when I shifted out of that place years ago. I could probably corner the world 'jambu air' market by selling them at such exorbitant prices! Back then we didn't need to pay for it cos we had the tree right in our compound.

We had quite a few fruit trees back in the house where I grew up in. We lived in this semi detached bungalow and it had quite a huge front and back yards. And we had a mango tree, a papaya tree, a jack fruit tree and of cos the 'jambu air' tree. In fact, the whole neighbourhood had all kinds of fruits trees and we allowed each other to simply take what we like cos we had so much of them.

And I love this 'jambu air' fruit. It was and still is one of my favourite fruits. I'd pluck as many as I can, wash and cut them up, then eat them with either salt or sugar and 'kicap' (don't know how to describe this but it's like soy sauce) Oh man, I can feel my saliva accumulating and my jaw tightening up just imagining the taste ... LOL!

I remember the neigbour's kids coming in and plucking as many 'jambu air' as they could fit in their pockets. Me and my cousins in return would go over to their place and pluck 'rambutans' (a lychee/longan type fruit) from their compound cos we didn't have that fruit tree at our place. And we all enjoyed sharing the fruits around the neighbourhood. Those were such fun times.

The fruits were in abundance and we could eat it all year round that we'd all grow fed up of it sooner or later and most of the fruits would just end up falling off the trees and rotting away. These days if I wanted to eat mangoes, rambutans or even some 'jambu air', I would have to go to the supermarket or some fruit shop and pay crazy prices for it.

The world isn't really the same anymore. The place where I currently live doesn't even have a yard big enough to grow grass let alone fruit trees. Granted, I do have a mango tree but just having that tree alone takes up a big portion of the yard and besides that mango tree has only given us its fruit twice in its entire lifetime.

And as for the rest of the neighbours, well, they don't even have a single fruit tree to begin with. And the ones that do have, I don't think I could just walk in and pluck the fruits. They'd probably let loose their dogs on me!

Siggghhh ... how I miss my childhood days when things were so much more fun and life was so much more simpler. Everyone knew each other and gates were not pad locked, we could trust everyone and no one would call the cops if you happen to walk into their compound and try plucking their fruits or anything like that.

I guess as far as I'm concerned, I'm probably going to have to be paying pretty steep prices for fruits that I used to eat as a kid which I could just walk outside my house and pluck anytime I so desired. I wonder if there will even be anymore fruit trees in the years to come?
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