Rat Ren Ri

The celebration of Renri, or literally People's Day, dates back to the Han Dynasty. The 7th day of the Lunar New Year, marks the creation of mankind, literally everyone's birthday. Before lou sang became generic affair, it was customary to lou sang on Renri. This year, I joined a bunch of sisters whom I never met before. Every month, they have a sharing session, discussing about various topics affecting the gay community. Primarily a Chinese-speaking group. Surprised that KH actually can fit in. They organized a dinner at Restoran Sek Yuen, one of KL's oldest Cantonese restaurants (since 1948). The restaurant along Jalan Pudu now occupies three shop lots, and on that night, they seemed to be operating at full capacity. Our party occupied three tables on the second, and boy was it cramped (the good 'ol pre-Covide-19 days). KH introduced me to all the fabulous guests. I only knew three of them, the rest were all fresh faces. I had to be on my best behaviour. :P.

I had heard good things about Sek Yuen, but I wasn't too impressed with the food that night. Perhaps it's true that standards do drop during the CNY period with everything pre-prepared and frozen. However, the lou sang was pretty good. And I liked the steamed grouper and fish maw soup. Talking about the grouper, they actually gave us the wrong fish. It was supposed to be a pomfret, which they served later. They wanted to charge us for it, but the combined bitchiness a whole table of sisters repelled that silly notion.  The signature Eight Treasure Duck was underwhelming, and seemed like starchy mess. The hamtan Scotch eggs and lap mei fan was average.

Since I couldn't socialize with everyone, I spent considerable time chatting with my 'neighbour', Art. Nice guy, who does accounting, and operates a bubble tea kiosk. He is quite knowledgeable about tea culture, and is also an avid tennis fan like JJ. After dinner, some of them went for round two at VCR Cafe, but KH and I decided to call it a night.