Pictures I Lost Last Year

Yesterday, as it has been for a few years, my uncle invited us to one of the dinners organised by the temple, held in conjunction with a noisy auction. It's rather hard not to miss when it's held behind a huge wall that looks like a castle, bright lights, huge flags, and a Chinese opera playing out next to it. Last year, smart little me accidentally deleted all the photos before I could even upload them anywhere. Well not this year!

This year was slightly different than the past few, the tent was much bigger, but the tables seem to shrink, and it was in a totally different location. My 2 cousins took a ride with us to the location and amazingly didn't start their nonsense until much later. Ian, usually cranky when tired, actually was cheerful enough to pose for a few photos, especially happy when posing with his toy puppy. I got a feeling it's all the bubbles in the orange soda he drank that got him to lighten up. I would never get my Coke Light... so I ended downing glass after glass of Iced Chinese Tea. What a joke! Even bigger joke was when I asked for Chinese tea in English and she told me in Mandarin that they don't have it but they have exactly the same thing, only known to her as "zhong guo cha". I didn't know if I should laugh or cry then as I knew I had to start yapping in Mandarin to them the whole night to make sure that I get an iced tea and not some hot stuff that burns my tongue.

Anyway, it started around 8.30 together with the auction, making people bid ridiculous rates for mundane things like a bicycle. When I say different, even the food this year was different, it's the same caterer, it's always catered by my grandfather's neighbour. Anyhoo... it usually starts with hot steaming buns, but this year the first dish was actually the one that usually came out at the end, the noodles. The noodles looked really plain and simple yet tasted really good, must have been the leeks in it that added to the flavour, something which my mom, unfortunately, could not taste.

Somehow, the arrival of the next dish depended on the auction, if they think it's going well, the next dish is served up rather fast, and if they needed to stretch it out, we kinda go hungry. The next dish however, marked the arrival of the Guest-of-Honour, one of Singapore's MPs with a long name. Ian was considering going over to grab a few prawns off their plate when they got up to greet her but he was a little too shy. So 2nd dish was my fave among all the Chinese dinner dishes, the cold dish that's a platter of assorted yummies.

Personal Cold Dish




Ian Ate It All

Eventually the food is served rather quickly, possibly due to the presence of the VIP, but portions this year seem to have shrunk. Well, doesn't really matter when u have quite a few different dishes to go through.

Shark's Fin Soup


Herbal Chicken


Runaway Mushroom?




Huge Steamed Pomfret


Sweet Steamed Prawns

Oddly, it seemed to stop there and the auction was going really fast as they were running out of time. When the plates arrived, it gave a few of us quite a shock as it was something new, and some of us were almost full, waiting for dessert. Well, more buns for me then.

Kong Bak Pao

Quite a few people didn't bother to stay for dessert and left but they definitely didn't miss anything special.

Iced Canned Longans

Went home satisfied and a little deaf.