cindy and i had high tea at orchard hotel this afternoon. "we're tai-tais-in-training," she said. definitely not the real things: we were easily the youngest women there, and our presence only the happy consequence of my mother giving us a voucher for it. from where we sat on the second level we could see the lobby and two of the four faces of the huge clock at the centre of the room - singapore and london are 7 hours apart. the spread was not spectacular but not bad either - mini charsiew pau, curry puffs, some kind of quiche, har-kao, porkfloss on baguettes and roast beef sandwiches, some kind of salmon pate on tiny scones, bite-size fried chicken. unfortunately, we'd had a carefully controlled, yet still too filling lunch at marche less than 3 hours before and were incapable of eating v much more, so we didn't pay much attention to the sweets. the mango sponge looked very inviting, and i knew for a fact that it was good, having tasted a sister sponge at the orchard hotel cafe last week, but by that time it was all i could do to reluctantly ignore it. as i did the truffles, fudge cake squares, chocolate-almond mousse, kueh lapis and oh! you could make a pandan waffle with blueberry and whipped cream topping! i have now got a sorethroat, which is not a good time to be thinking about the fullerton chocolate buffet, but in two weeks i might think of that again. when everyone gets back i shall organise a all-girls chocolate outing to the fullerton. yes indeed i will.