Of sambal and belachan

That's right, we started another contraversy in the classroom today. Who's the we? Non other than Rhema and I, fond of starting contraversies such as the infamous toilet contraversy of facing doors or walls. Now, it's of sambal and belachan.

The oddness we go through is simply undeniable. It's amazing how some of us chinese had no idea sambal is actually belachan, technically. The main argument of today was...

"Is it belachan or sambal on top of the panggang sting ray?"

Rhema claims its belachan. Which, I knocked it down by saying that belachan is a solid, brick-hard cylindrical-shaped thing. Nobody in their right mind would take a bite of the fish and a bite of the rock-hard solid and not puke up what that just went down their oesophagus. She knocked it down with by claiming that if you blend the belachan up, you get the belachan sauce. Utter crap? We even ditched the work that we were doing at that point just to debate on sambal and belachan. Mind you, I ditched chemistry just to debate about belachan and sambal. The class joined in, debating if it was belachan or sambal or whether belachan and sambal were the same thing. When Farrah heard about Rhema and her "it's belachan on the sting ray" issue. She went,

"my God you! Do you even know what's belachan??! People eat belachan with umai but not like that with sting ray!!!"
What's umai?? I googled it up and that's what I got. So now... we eat sushi with belachan???

My dad quipped in when I filled him in about this after school with,

"anything made out of belachan is sambal".

How true is that? Probably a void statement.