A Mind of My Own

You can say that again. Couples planning to tie the knots are having trouble trying to book their preferred hotels due to the steep and rising prices of the banquet tables. Even the red packets (ang baos) have to be bigger too. That way, the couple will not be able to cover their wedding celebrations, let alone honeymoon.

The price list for 2007 is available and I can’t imagine what it’ll be like for 2008 onwards. All these are just the tip of the iceberg, when the housing loans and renovation bills come, you’ll start to think how to get married with all these huge debts.

Went for a dinner treat by ES because the sisters have helped out at her wedding. It was great and I am now fatter than before. Great. I have resolved to do some workout but have done nothing until now. I think by getting wider in the girth, I get lazier. Darn.

We had the dinner at Just Greens in Chinatown. Ordered my favourite, fried golden mushrooms. Yummy and oily and sinfully great. I love the salad and oat meal prawns too. As for the mapo tofu, sorry, I’m not a fan of spicy food. However, everyone enjoyed the treat.

After the full dinner, we went for dessert. Oh no! The money for the drinks and fries! Erm, I think I got 2 free treats today. Thanks! Anyway, I’m growing old. I noticed that I have minute crow’s feet! NO!

The Legends in Fort Canning sounds like a fantasy. A place where legends come to life. DD’s friend was holding her wedding dinner there and I went with him. A cocktail reception was still going on at 8pm. The wedding card stated 7.30pm. Eventually, everyone arrived by 8.35pm. Sometimes, I hate Chinese style wedding dinners. Everyone is hungry.

The newly-weds had 3 changes of clothes. The first was a white gown with a long train. She looked absolutely lovely. The food started arriving after that. The food was up to standard but the timing was off. It didn’t seem to come within a certain timing. The 2nd change of clothes for the couple came up after the 3rd course arrived. The couple wore black. My parents would have jumped at my throat for wearing a black gown.

This gown had a huge can can. It suited the bride very well too. At the end of the dinner, the couple had a final change of clothes. This time, to a Pernarakan for the bride and a white suit for the groom. The couple had friends mixing cocktail of beer, brandy, red wine and some soy sauce in red wine to drink. Oh my.

I liked the ambiance at the place, just that the area was rectangular and the 2nd walk in was to be done at the other end. I wondered why the drinks weren’t refilled that promptly by the time it was near the bottom of the glass. My favourite was the dessert, honeydew sago. Nice. I do hate the dish before the dessert, fried noodles. By that time, I was already bursting at the seams, I don’t need the noodles to add on to my growing girth.

I think I’m not going to hold such a dinner. I would like to hold mine in a different way. Now, to convince the parents.

It’s Christmas and this morning, I slept at 3am. That’s because I went to attend a Christmas party with DD at his friend’s place. The friend was so helpful. As the girlfriend, or as long as anyone is a woman, she is to buy the gifts for the gift exchange. Men and their ideas of what a woman should be doing. Them and their ideas of women doing the traditional role of housekeeping and looking after babies. Well, that’s if the men can bring home the bacon, ya?

Now, with 10 plus people attending this party, there has to be food. At 11pm. With fried chicken, wanton, salad and pizza. That’s a lot of food when there aren’t so many people attending. No wonder DD is getting, erm, more Buddha like. Now, what’s a party on Christmas Eve without a gift exchange? The drawing of the lots was simple, each gift had a number, you just pick one number from the box and the gift is yours, except not what you have bought.

DD had a cute photo frame with a bear holding a heart. I had Crabtree and Evelyn’s body and shower gel. I’m so tired. Waking up at 10.30am doesn’t help and I noticed that I’m having too many dark rings and wrinkles under my eyes. I’m old! And I am Legend doesn’t feel like a good movie to watch despite what DK claimed. I guess the only interesting and exciting parts are those shown in the trailer.

VivoCity, a place where I’ve been frequenting more these days. We can’t forget about filling up our stomachs, can we? DD decided to use the voucher we gained the 1st time we dined at Doc Green Salad and Gourmet. It was about 9pm when we placed our orders. It was a busy night so we didn’t expect the orders to be fulfilled that fast.

DD and I even had the time to take a toilet break each within our 25-minute wait. I had my breadbowl with the mushroom soup that was already finished. So was DD’s clam chowder. The coke was ridiculously late. Our sky juice was already dried up but still no sign of the main course. It was 9.15pm.

It was a busy night but I felt that it was really ridiculous that our ice water wasn’t refilled and the coke that was the easiest drink to arrive was very late in arrival. After the coke was emptied, no main course in sight. Tired and hungry, DD signaled to the waitress for his order. The manager was summoned. He gave us a free drink each on the house.

It’s time that they train the staff to be better at handling busy nights instead of being able to handle less crowd. The food wasn’t that bad but their service had to improve. Oh, we got another voucher from the manager.

I wanted to stay at home cozy yesterday. All was fine until ES SMS me, “Where are you?” My 1st mistake was to “At home.” My 2nd was to log online as demanded. My 3rd was to be good friends with ES and HF. Ok, that last part was a joke. Don’t kill me.

Eventually, after much cajoling online and extreme nudges, I got ready to meed HF as she would be taking a cab down. We had a trying time looking for places to have a drink. As in coffee, tea or Ice Blended Latte. However, most closed at 11pm and it was already 10.30pm. Note to self: Millenia Walk is a lousy place to have a quiet chat. The pub there don’t even serve hot drinks after 5pm.

We wanted to sit at Dreamer’s Live! Cafe but it was full house. What a pity. In the end, we took up a spot at McDonald’s in Suntec City. We can always depend on Good Ol’ Mac. It was midnight when we ended our thoughts of life with each other. The wait for the taxi was ridiculously long. There were so many people in the queue but all the taxi’s were On Call.

One taxi driver even blatantly stopped in the circle for someone to book a cab. The audacity! The queue where we were waiting, refused to call for a cab. The driver waited for about 3 minutes before we saw it light up with “On Call”. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see the license plate.

Our total waiting time for the taxi was 45 minutes. We should thank LTA and our million-dollar MPs for promoting such good service. We have to wait for 45 minutes to take the “150% surcharge at midnight and Late Night surcharge” taxis. It would definitely be easier if we can just pay $6 on board fare cum $0.05 per 500m for the trip. I find it torturous to calculate the fares. Oh wait, our million-dollars MPs prefer formulas to show off their thorough thinking-ness.