i'm always slightly surprised when our first wednesdays dinners come around - how quickly a whole month passes! we've now had two more dinners to add to the list:
9. poach: casa bom vento (eurasian, bugis)last night also doubled as a birthday celebration for cindy (who hasn't stopped hinting for weeks, ahem.) although after two weeks of secrecy adeline gave the game away less than 20 minutes before the surprise was sprung by sending out an email about the secret birthday plans with cindy on the mailing list - the complete dingbat, how did a security agency come to hire her, they'd better send commandos to come and take her out, etc etc. cindy's largely coconut-themed presents included a cute canvas bag (addy: it is coconut coloured!) into which we put coconut bath cream and body lotion, breadtalk vouchers, a "fake" kfc voucher, (poach: you must frame this hor.) a copy of thief of time, (because she's always complaining that we don't give her books.) and we had venezia coconut sorbet for dessert.
10: xinyi: the french stall (french, little india)
last night i hadn't felt a thing - it was like any other of our monthly dinners - but today i've been feeling very sad that that was my last first wednesday for a long while - i don't know when i'll be here for the next (eh womans, if i'm back for the end-jan school break, will you have the february first-weds as january last-weds?) the pity is all the greater because the next time it was my turn i would have loved to get the girls to defu lane for creamy butter crab at the seafood paradise restaurant, which i really like and think the girls will too. (on the 854 route too, for cindy and poach, and near to the nel for xinyi!) and even su-lin will find plenty of non-seafood items there to keep her happy. and i can think of at least three teochew restaurants, two of which do remarkably good crayfish...
oh and earlier in the day i went to buona vista to have lunch with poach and joanna tan (i haven't seen her for 8 years! come to that i haven't seen many of the non-humanz 4/12ers for nearly as long as that.) joanna is also at moe, working in curriculum planning for lower sec science, and with poach, cheryl chan and mona well-placed at moe as well, 4/12ers seem to have taken control of our nation's education!
that reminds me. one of su-lin's colleagues apparently went around the office conducting a poll: would one, in exchange for five million dollars, let someone cut off one's finger? (the point of this survey is to show that the people who say yes immediately are usually civil servants with bonds. regard su-lin: "you people need to think about it? they can cut off my little finger - i don't use it for anything, i'll just train the next finger to type the 'a'.")
the rest of us:
"well... which finger?"
"if it's the thumb, definitely not."
"it's like in insurance, different fingers are valued differently."
"but five billion is a lot of money."
"did you say five million or five billion?"
"can you imagine that's how many years of tuition and rent"
"five million, maybe not. five billion, i probably would?"
"like emilia in othello."
"how do you mean cut it off?"
"will it be under proper surgical procedure, with anaesthesia?"
"or is it like in roald dahl?"
"are you people serious?"