Diversifying Ruined

Yay! Friday is getting nearer and nearer. Will be going to Bintan Nirwana Beach Club with "F4+2+another one". While the purpose is to relax and enjoy ourselves, we are celebrating Gavin's birthday there as well as his birthday falls on the 31st of July.

Anyway, if you have noticed my tagboard, I have been ranting about the "BIBI 皮皮 player". Its actually a software similar to those popular ones like Sopcast, PPLive etc. Well, my sister have been watching her Taiwan drama using the player almost every night. And apparently, this 皮皮 player seems to be lagging my Internet connection. It lags like shit and even Wireless@SG with 1mbps signal strength is faster.

The problem actually doesn't lies with the stupid BIBI 皮皮 player. Whenever the desktop is switched on, my notebook would have notice the decrease in Internet connection speed. Unable to blame it on my MOL8k yet, I am looking to borrow a router to do some troubleshooting. Should it be true that it is due to ISP itself, ho ho ho.... goodbye starhub, hello singnet. But I am still binded by the stupid contract till year end.

Wendy and I reached Bugis only to find my sister and mum late. We walked around Bugis and found that there is food festival. The first stall we came across was selling my favorite Oyster Mee Sua and Bella's curry fishball!!! Then we saw the piping hot taiwan sausage. We decided to get 1 stick of sausage to satisfy our growling stomach.

Apparently, we spent about 10min wating the sausage in front of the stall. Because we were contemplating whether to get ourselves the mee sua and curry fishball because we were too hungry and those are boiling in front of us!!!

This is the stall!

Plucked up courage, we decided to move on. Ya, we moved on instead of moving OFF. We walked round the food festival and found more and more tempting delicancy!! It was a torture walk as we are saving the space for our dinner at Crystal Jade.

Finally, a saving SMS was flashing on my mobile phone. My family has arrived!!! We stormed walked to Crystal Jade to meet them.

Left: Spicy Chicken
Right: Wanton La Mian


Left: 4 season beans NICE!
Right: Spicy la mian

Left: Spare ribs that cost $6.50 a piece
Right: Cold duck meat (my mum "soot" ka liao)


Chiong food 1st, photos
later.

Don't care, EAT!

Right, you would have guess it. With the drinks craze Gavin and suddenly-able-to-take-alcohol Roy, our final destination was to go for some drinks at Gavin's house. As claimed by the man himself, his house was just "walking distance" from Hougang Plaza. Boy, was it really true? Well, lets see, we walked from Hougang Plaza, to Hougang Mall, cross the road, pass Punggol CC, pass the new soccer field before making a left turn into one of the HDB flat. Not really far to the guys but the ladies were ranting. While the rest of the guys are walking in front, I was walking with little Bella and Irene at the back. Listening to all the topics discussed between the 2 of them, I was educated with words like Brazilian wax, bikini style etc.

Vodka original, Vodka mango and the black Vodka bottle are the stars

Reached his house, we were welcomed by his Mum and his elder brother. Deep sleepers as they were, we still try to keep our volume low as there are neighbors too. We bought some mixer (green tea, rashberry, redbull), some ice and tidbits. The initial programme was just some social drinking, eating and watching TV.

Left: We love hiding behind something concrete. Previously was a pool table. This time round, a sofa!
Right: Just look at the emo Roy

Left: Downing the whole cup
Right: Bella's alcohol intake for the night was limited by me, its a blessing actually. You will find out why soon.

It was approaching 2am when Gavin suggested to play some drinking game. He brought a new bottle of vodka and some dice out.

Quite simple, just purely drinking game. Couldn't really said who drank the most. Most of us drank at least half to 1 cup of vodka nic as the game went on. And towards the middle, practically everyone was pouring the disgusting vodka nic into the cup, with ice of course.

2nd horror (For Gavin)


Soon, most of us were getting red, ok its only me, Ben and Roy.

Left: The "high" Roy with the warm towel
Right: The drunk Ben. He got owned just like that

Left: Lying on his front
Right: Lying on his back

Left: Some secret chant that the drunk Roy performed on the drunk Ben.
Right: Toilet bowl was his best friend for the night.

The survivors!

We left Gavin's place at around 6am. Bella was approaching Cloud Nine, Seven Heaven or whatever you call it. And amazingly, the chant "Reaching soon, don't close your eyes, later can sleep with your Cinderella comforter liao" works really well. Bella was practically walking to my house with her eyes WIDE OPEN, think goldfish.

Finally, after a bathe and blowing her hair dry, she went to bed with her personalised comforter.

What was to be planned as a budget steamboat dinner came out as a horror for some!

Irene, Grace, Wendy, Roy, Ben and me met up at Hougang Point NTUC at 4.30pm sharp to get our steamboat ingredients. Initially, we wanted to get 3 trolleys so that we can have an inaugural trolley race with me pushing Bella, Roy pushing Grace and Irene pushing Ben Ben pushing Irene. But what was deemed as a spoiler was that, we do not have enough coins!!! (even if we do, do you think we will do it? only nuts like Jackass do it)

We started pushing the look-bigger-than-average trolley around hunting for food as if there is a war. We took about half an hour to 45 to fill up the trolley one third full. Based on my vast amount of experience D.I.Ying steamboat at home, I predicted that the food are too much to finish. And all of us failed to predict the total price.


First horror: The total price exceeded the amount we would pay if we were to go to any of the steamboat restaurant in Bugis. Talk about budget! HAH


We then shared 2 cabs and proceeded to Irene's house (think mansion) to prepare the steamboat. The girls snatched the little kitchen area to do the washing and cutting of food. Left standing in a dismay, we guys have no choice but to just entertain ourselves with whatever that is available.

After some hard work of opening the 2 cans, we began doing up the most important part of the steamboat (guys are meant to accomplish big and important thing!). Yes, soup base is one of the most critical ingredient in a steamboat. After much mixing of 30% chicken soup, 20% chicken cube and 50% plain tap water, the soup is up and raring to go. Next important stuff, the chilli and soya sauce. Again, it is not an easy feat to accomplish, needless to mention, the guys are made to do it. Garlic, together with parsley, were mixed together to produce "she, xiang, wei" padi chilli with soya sauce.


Be it a coincidence or not, Gavin arrived just in time during the transition between "food finished preparing" and "steamboat ready to commence" period. Nevertheless, he agreed to wash the dishes after the dinner BUT HE APPARENTLY DID NOT! Poor Bella and me washed the dishes instead.


After the satisfying dinner, we went up to Irene's room for a relax cum little beer drinking session. The initial plan was actually to have durian after steamboat but apparently, it was a mission too hard to comply. Nevertheless, we decided to walk our way to the durian stall and "look see look see". A good 20min of walking I would say.


Upon reaching the place, we concluded that we could not force ourselves to down the durian during that moment of point. Hence; the typical formation arise (forming a circle) whenever we have to think of places to go.


Next destination, kbox. We boarded a bus only to realise it will not reach our destination. Instead, we have to alight at a distance away and route march another 30min to Hougang Plaza's kbox. We contemplated whether to carry out this imprompt mission as the cost per head calculated was not worthwhile.

So, we decided instead (after the formation arose for few min) to..... TO BE CONTINUED. Stay tuned for part 2 :)