more of these often please

Met up with a group of new friends I got to know in the car forum for dinner on Saturday. We went to this nice place called Dempsey Hill. It was a neat place on a hill around Holland Road, and it was basically a collection of pretty restaurants.

I can't believe myself for not discovering this place earlier, for it was really a great place to chill. We went to Ben and Jerry's restaurant near the top of the hill, and the great ambience really put me at ease.

Decided not to have any main course that day because I wasn't really hungry. Anyway, the restaurant had just introduced their dinner menus the evening before, so there was only 3 dishes you could order. Something along the lines of roasted chicken and beef burgers..looked good but pricey though..26 dollars..and the portions weren't fantastic. But just take it that you are paying for the ambience and it'll probably be worth it.

Ended up having a raspberry cheesecake, a coffee and a chocolate fudge Sundae. Sweet, sweet, sweet..

Stayed around and chatted until quite late and we also celebrated one of the member's birthday with durian puffs and mango cake. Great.

It was rather surprising how I felt at ease with a group of people I haven't met at all prior to the outing. They were all at least 5 years older than me and I thought I would have real problem fitting in because they were already a closely knit group. The feeling was really great, able to fit in quite comfortably with a bunch of unfamiliar faces. Maybe it was the ambience, maybe they were especially easy going.

I haven't had this combination of good company, great food and fantastic ambience in a while. We are probably going to meet up next month or so for another round of dining. Oh yah, I haven't mentioned, this group meets up about once a month for good food and company.

For one thing, I'll definitely be going back to Dempsey Hill to check out the rest of the restaurants.

am proud of my dad

Today, my dad went for singing auditions for the karaoke competition organized by Marine Parade GRC.

He did decently. Not fantastic like some others. But I'm proud of him.

My dad takes singing rather seriously. You could say it's his passion. He spends most of his free time singing and seems to enjoy every minute of it. It's always great when you have something you truly indulge in, something you would love to continue for hours and still have that spark in your eye. I certainly saw that in my dad.

For this audition, he bought a new pair of shoes and made a pair of 'degree-less' spectacles to cover his eyebags. It's always a rare occasion when my dad actually buys something for himself. He spends on us but scrimps when it comes to himself, especially when it comes to clothes and shoes. I was a tad surprised when he actually parted with 180 bucks for the specs just like that, with much less consideration than I expected..but I guess he wanted to look good on stage, afterall, it's his first official competition.

Guess it all paid off. No matter what, he still looked really smart in new glasses and his $20 shoes. His long sleeved cardigan was nothing new, in fact it's probably almost as old as I..but he still looked good.

Watching him singing on stage was really a proud moment for me. I love singing too and I can relate to what it's like to be singing in front of a huge crowd for the first time. It may not seem like a big thing to the audience but to the performer, it is. The preparation, the anxiety, the moment when you feel like you're lost in time..and before you know it, it's over and you secretly crave for applause.

It certainly would be a defining moment for my dad.

what are we up to?

Almost a week ago on Saturday, I went on a uncomfortably long road trip from Suntec City to Pasir Ris, somehow circled the entire perimeter of Changi Airport, and ended up lost while doing some mindless circling. Later it was all the way back to Kallang.

You see, my best friend had bought a present for a girl and requested me to drive him to Pasir Ris to hand it to the girl. I have no issue with that. He's my buddy and I'm willing to crazy shit like this. =)

So we decided to take the route on the ECP all the way up to the Changi Airport direction to Pasir Ris, where the girl stays. We ended up taking the long way along the airport perimeter. Later, we sorta got lost and circled pretty much around the Changi Village, chalet areas..

It was kind of draining and boring because most of the roads we travelled were dark and litted dimly by street lamps. It did not help that I was terribly unfamiliar with that area. It actually seemed fun at first, but all the continuous driving soon made me tired and frustrated.

Actually I'm ok with all this, I mean if I was in my friend's shoes, I would also love someone to help me convey my feelings to the important someone in the fastest and most surprising way possible. I would also have felt that appearing at the void deck of the girl I had a crush on late at night just to pass her a present would seem sweet.

The thing is..he did not even manage to see the girl and only left it at a place where she could collect later on. Her parents didn't allow her to go downstairs.

I'm not implying that it wasn't worth it or anything. The whole trip made me feel a tinge of deja vu and there was a little frustration going on within me. It reminded me of the times when I put in so much effort in choosing a birthday present for the girl I like, then mustering enough courage to give it to her.

And it seemed a rather big thing to me back then. Going around shopping excitedly for a suitable present where budget was the last thing on my mind..then writing a card or personalising the gift to make sure she likes it. Finally gathering the courage to pass it to her, hoping at the back of your mind that she adores it.

It all boiled down to nothing anyway. It was useless if she didn't have the slightest interest for you.

So having to go through the whole road trip helping my best friend accomplish something he wasn't even sure would succeed was certainly a bit frustrating on my part. The feeling was hard to describe..a bit helpless, a bit familiar.

Oh well, I hope I at least made a difference.

accident along PIE

There was a huge traffic jam along the PIE towards Changi Airport as I returned from Toa Payoh. Seemed like a major accident had occured along one of the lanes. I remembered as I entered the Sims Ave exit, there was this ambulance parked in the chevron markings with a taxi behind it, and there was a man lying near the rear of the taxi.

Wasn't sure if he was dead but he was unconscious. Further down, I noticed that at the far end of the expressway there seemed to be yet another commotion - flashing blue lights and people walking around the area. Not too sure if they were the same accident as they were pretty far apart.

According to my friend I met earlier, a motorcyclist crashed into a taxi on Lane 1, so my guess would be that it was probably the same accident but the taxi was perhaps , the moved to the only available open space on the busy roads.

Anyhow, it caused a huge jam all the way from Toa Payoh and the traffic was literally left crawling. Took quite a while to get home.

It's interesting to realise how an individual's moment of rashness or folly can have such a significant impact on so many other people. Probably one misjudgement by either party has resulted in hundreds of vehicles being delayed on the roads. Arriving at their destinations late again, would have brought about different conclusions to the day as compared to reaching early or punctual.

Each person involved in the jam would also have had different thoughts surfacing regarding the accident and probably also left the scene feeling different - frustrated or sympathetic, maybe they became more sleepy while traffic came to a standstill.

For me, I felt a moment of trauma, no doubt it was just a little, when I saw the man unconscious on the ground. It was a potent dose of reality.

I arrived home 10 minutes later than usual.

of sushi and suggestions

Howard treated me to Sakae Sushi on Saturday. I'm a sua ku. It's my first time eating at this type of conveyor belt sushi restaurant.

It's a pretty cool concept since it gives consumers the illusion of variety. There are so many colourful dishes of sushi in different coloured plates passing by the tables, yet many are repeated. The 'cheap' dishes in green and blue plates don't really add up a lot of cost in production, but their supposedly cheaper price and nice presentation easily piles them up on the tables.

I personally like the tofu dish. Oh well, actually I love tofu in general. No matter how they're cooked, I enjoy it. Anyway, their salmon sushi topped with mayo wasn't too bad either. And I still hate wasabi.

The issue with this type of restaurant is that you have the tendency to just keep piling your table with little regards to the prices being added slowly but surely because all the dishes come in minute amounts on small cute plates, so you have the impression you are eating a little by a time and you sorta want to eat more. Afterall, the dishes are just centimetres away from your nose and you don't have to wait. So why not take another of those salmon sushi? =D

I think they aren't that cheap in the first place..The cheapest is $1.90 per dish. But sometimes, we see it as 1 dollar plus instead of $2. So the costs add up pretty quickly. Luckily I didn't have to worry about it. Not I pay. Haha.

Would like to thank Howard for giving me this birthday treat with the money he earned for submitting an a*my suggestion form, something I've probably done dozens of times with less than a quarter being actually approved.

That's what happens if you set a quota on the number of suggestions submitted and a deadline for them so as to look good on paper, with the real 'spirit' of feedback ignored, if there's such a thing.

If I have a suggestion, I'll submit it. You can't force feedback if you have nothing else to suggest! When you work in a mostly vegetated area in a mostly routine job, there is only this much you can talk about.