Irish Luck

Chirashi-don
Swiped from williamnyk.

Ever since I put up my Contact Me feature I have made some interesting interactions with my readers. Some normal. Some abnormal (definitely something for another post). Enjoyed some e-mail conversations, perhaps some FB and IM interaction. If things click, we may end up meeting face to face. So far I've met Lun, a youngn' who works near my office. And recently, Finnegan, an Irishman based in HK. He was in town for a couple of days, so we arranged a lunch date on Saturday. Picked him up from the Gardens Hotel (the traffic was exceptionally smooth. I was expecting Hell from CNY shoppers!) and drove over to nearby Nihon-kai. Had their Chirashi-don accompanied by a nice chat. More often than not, the topic veered towards food and travel. Found him to be quite a shy person. Likes to think before he speaks (So unlike me. Should I tone down my laser? Haha, I think not). Can tell that he loves having intellectual discourses but I don't think I'm the kind of person who can give him much to work on. LOL. He bought me lunch, so he automatically qualifies for "Nice Guy" status in my book. :). After lunch, we went to Sweet Bean Station for some tong sui. I chose a combination of black sesame and tau foo fah. Quite a yin yang approach-- black and white; hot and cold. By 3:00pm, I had to leave, so I sent him back to the hotel. As a parting gift, he presented me with W. Somerset Maugham's "On a Chinese Screen". It was very sweet of him.



Drove home, picked up SK and headed to SEA Park to get Apollo. Stopped by Restoran Rishadh to alas perut fbefore HP's wedding banquet later that night. Downed tosai, naan and roti telur. Just a short rest before Sis came to pick us up to Oriental Noble House, off Jalan Tun Razak. Met several ex-classmates there. Luckily, food was served before 8:30pm. We thought that the heavy rain would have made things even tardier. Food was quite suck-ish. Their yawn-worthy and oxymoronic "simple yet extravagant" opening food presentation really set the pace for the night. Too many fried items. The smoked chicken was over-smoked! I thought I was eating extinguished cigaratte buts. Perhaps the chicken died from excessive smoke inhalation. The shark fin soup was a tad salty. The fish (fried to a crisp) and prawns weren't fresh. The desserts were not up to mark. Felt like they just dumped the ingredients into sugar water. And the Chinese pancake was too oily! Interesting highlights included HP's hubby struggling to pop the champagne cork. From the way the emcee was commentating, it was as though he would have problems getting it up in the bridal chamber that night. :P. Cyan's favourite dish was the glutinous rice. He had four servings of it! At the end of the dinner, I had no feeling of bloatedness. No guilt. A success for my waistline where the chef failed.

Anyway, wishing HP and hubby a great journey into holy matrimony together.