Don't say I never take you to dine at fancy places

It has been such a tiring week but I still managed to go out do a coupla things to unwind. I went and helped car selling, then I went and helped car shopping. Great help I was. I sat and watched while my friend, emboldened by my very presence, extracted free fog lamps (it's been hazy lately), leather upholstery and MP3 CD-R Disc Changer from the car dealer. Then dinner was taken at that very swanky establishment on River Valley Road, Boon Tong Kee Little Gourmet, where al-fresco dining is available on the five-foot way, on dressed tables and chairs covered with black faux leather. As if the additional ambience provided by the stifling heat and lingering smell of bushfires isn't enough, there are candles in big square jars with rooster motifs. After you've contemplated the menu (chicken rice for two, breast meat please), the waitress with the perpetually quizzical expression and Johorean Mandarin brings you your cutlery wrapped in pandan-leaf green A4 paper folded and pleated to look like pandan leaves. Or very raw otak. For it is traditional way to eating Hainanese Chicken Rice with fork and spoon sticky with raw otak. And because there's the stifling heat and the lingering smell of bushfires, you need a drink. And the de rigeuer fixer upper at such an establishment would be the house pour barley water, served from a mini sized jug into shot glasses. Die, die, must try. There isn't much time to chew the fat and shoot the breeze, because your waitress brings serves your order pretty quickly. You are overwhelmed by the results of their culinary dexterity when you see your dinner. The chicken breast, chopped Boon Tong Kee style, isn't very much out of the ordinary, but the rice. The rice! It comes on a square plate! It's piled into a pyramid. A Pyramid! Egypt! Ramses! Chicken Rice! Tutankhamen! Ramses II! We had to mummify our laughter, I tell you. Until the bill came. Nabeh, not cheap. For to wet your whistle with Year of the Cock commemorative candle Egypt!

Surf stop: SMLXL

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Hallelujah - k.d. lang - Hymns Of The 49th Parallel, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.