As you all know, the price of rice has increased by about 20% since around last month. But the fact that you may not know is that the price had already increase since last year and since we still can bear with it, we did not push it to the consumers. So now the consumers have to bear the increasing cost with us.
A lot of aunties counter argued that the government said it will not increase the price of rice. Yes, that's what they said but what they didn't say is which particular type of rice will not increase. Well, the government only subsidies one type of rice, that is the local 15% broken rice type and the price of the others are not controlled. To be honest, only the poor will eat this type of rice because it is not tasty. Even the mamak store and economy rice doesn't use this type of rice because the customers doesn't like it. They rather use Siamese rice which comes from Thailand.
The government has reassured us that we will have enough rice and also will increase the production of it but do they know that Malaysian will buy it or not? We, Chinese tend to eat fragrant rice from Thailand because we were brought up eating it since young. The Malays and Indians tend to eat Siamese rice which suits their taste bud because it goes well with chili and curries. So what the government is doing is they are subsidying and stockpiling for the poor and some of the foreign workers in our country. And why I say some is because nowadays, Indonesian workers also know how to eat fragrant rice and they buy by the sacks.
The price hike has affected a lot of aunties and everytime they see me, the first thing they ask is, has the price gone up again? The answer I give will always be the same, "I will tell you when the price is up", then give a little smile. I don't dare to say much because the price is ever increasing and not stable. One aunty who has been buying from me since I started selling rice about 5 years ago was so shock to hear of the price increase that she said she will buy from the hypermarkets. I told her that is was alright and even recommended a type of cheap rice for her and since that day, I did not see her again. This incident showed me how cold people are nowadays and no 'human love taste' (yan ching mei). Some people rather eat less quality rice than to fork out that extra ringgit so that they can save it for later.
That is the uncertain world that we are living in now, so let's just be grateful that we still have that bowl of 'wo ba' rice on our table and make sure we finish every bit of rice and not waste any.
