my “Chinese” dinner

Summary:

Tonight was the first time I held a dinner… in the sense that I cooked for others… and it was a failure in terms of the food I cooked… *faint* haha… my fried rice was too dry. Hai, I can’t even get fried rice right! Fortunately, the company was great. I had a fun time talking and laughing with Marie (my housemate), Hitomi (my Japanese friend) and Andres (her Mexican husband).

Let’s start with food:

I cooked fried rice and fried vegetables. Which were edible. Haha. And I also baked a chocolate cake (which I think is nice, haha) and gave them pineapple tarts to try. Haha… although Andres questioned it’s authenticity as Chinese since they were tarts. Marie also baked some pastry thingy with homemade cream inside. It was very nice and sweet! Hitomi made salmon sushi! Ooh it was so delicious, especially the wasabi!

Now the “laugh until cheeks pain moments” (I quote Hitomi):

We laughed so much… from 8 till 12!!! I can’t really remember everything already… basically it was because Andres is the “gao xiao” (i.e. jokey) type of guy. And cos I was so comfortable, I fell into my bimbo mode… in other words, saying silly or diao stuff that causes people to laugh at me (oh gosh… no face le. Haha). Anyway, he “say me” until I had to say “thaaaanks” in the Edelene way quite a few times! And I rarely use that lingo here! (NB. Unless you understand my lingo and history, the previous sentences would have made no sense to you)

Anyway, it was a funny – in the haha way – night! Some things I discovered:

1. Singapore was referred to as “Nazi Disneyland” in an airplane booklet (Andres was the one who read it)! Haha… why? Because it’s so nice and clean and fun and perfect, but it’s full of rules! I felt that it was such an interesting phrase. Haha
   
2. Durian is such a fascinating thing to non-Southeast Asians. Haha… the same airplane booklet described the smell as disgusting. I think Andres and Hitomi will go and try it… but will probably suffer through the experience! Haha.
   
3. Marie was so amazed that NUS only gives you one shot at your exams… cos here in Europe, you get to retake a few times, until you are satisfied… haha, cool right?
   
4. Nokia is amazing… according to Andres, who works for Nokia, they do all sorts of stuff to the phone to test its endurance… hai, Nokia is zai… pity that the designs are not as pretty as the Japanese/Korean phones. By the way, Andres has a 1000 Euro (gasp! S$2000) Nokia phone which is a really good 3G phone with a camcorder!!
   
5. Hitomi told us that in Japanese… there’s 5 levels of you, and me. What I mean is, for example in an extreme case where you are very high ranking, I will use the 5th level of “you” when refer to you when I speak, and the 1st level of “me” when I refer to myself. (in which 1st is lowest, 5th is highest) But most of the time they use middle level. Haha.