WACM - What a cryptic message.

What a cryptic message.

We celebrated a friend's birthday last friday at a decent Japanese-French fusion restaurant. Set dinner of 7-courses were pretty good, though we all unanimously agreed that the mains could do with more greens. 3 out of 4 of us had beef, the other, myself, had cod. The beef came in slices with a fan of tempura spaghetti (imagine the skeleton of a chinese fan with long thin "bones"), set on a leave and on a piece of hot stone granite on a bed of pebbles on a plate.

When we asked the waiter what the fan was (it wasn't stated on the menu, ok.), he swiftly but surely replied, "Oh, that's spaghetti tempura, you can either eat it or use it." His answer definitely left us puzzled. Use it? What did he mean? You surely can't fan yourself with it. You can't pick your teeth either. You can try to dig the dirt out of your fingernails and risk breaking the "bones" and them getting stuck there. We thought nothing of it anymore as we eagerly started on our mains, with our room cloaked in silence.

More about the beef when we got interuppted. The hot stone granite allows you to cook the beef slices to your desired doneness. However, there is one small flaw. The moment the beef slices reached the individual's desired doneness, they had no where to put it. They had 2 choices, either risk putting it on the shady looking pebbles or leave it on the still-cooking-hot granite, thus ensuring your beef is nicely overcooked. I prefer my beef to be medium-rare, at most medium. Anyway, so a friend decided to put her slices on top of the fan of spaghetti.

"Ah, i know where to put it"
Me: Wah lau eh, that's how you use it, like the waiter said. What the hell, why his message so cryptic?!"

Dessert pretty much sums up the overall experience. Nicely done, well-plated, good decor, knowledgeable and slightly humorous service staff.

Prior to dinner, we had a pretty late lunch at around 3pm at a Japanese joint as well. Then we had this hilarious conversation with C and D about D's mum.

Me: What time did you wake up today?

D: 11am. My mum came into my room (gesturing with her hands, her mum shaking her shoulder),"D, aren't you going out today?" Then I was like," YAAA!! But not so early laaaaa."

Then I recall the numerous times D had related a story about her mum waking her up in the past. As described by D, her mum would enter her room, off the a/c, open the windows, throw a blanket on her to warm her, I mean, wake her and start chatting with the still fast asleep D. How cruel is that?! But it's damn funny when you listen to it. I hate that heat generating feeling.

C: Lock your room door?
D: No use, she'd probably think that something happenned.

Me: Stick a note to tell her what time you want to be woken up?

D: Tried that. The other time I stuck a note that says, "Slept late, do not wake me up before lunch." She came in BEFORE lunch (gesturing again) and gently said,"D, what time do you want to have lunch ah?"

Cute.
*****

Saw this yesterday in a toilet cubicle in some industrial area. I cannot resist not taking a picture of it. Nice doors, bad paper quality and very much below average English. I mean, when was this put up? In the 1980s?!