So, the family travelled to this restaurant (Chao Shan Cuisine) for dinner on a Saturday to celebrate my dad's birthday. Kind of embarrassing but I'm not entirely sure how old my dad actually is. 60+ is all I know, ha-ha. To be fair, my parents aren't exactly sure how old my brother and I are either, so I guess we're even. At the very least, we know when each of our birthdays are, LOL. #failfamily
I was half expecting the restaurant to be of equal calibre to the kind my dad usually brings his company's customers to when they are in town. However, it's more similar to the kind of restaurants you find lining the roads of Chinatown - pretty old and cramp. No complains from me personally, but it got relatively troublesome with a baby in tow. Add in the fact that she hardly slept in the afternoon and that made for an interesting dinner to say the least.

Lesson learnt: bring at least one of the maids along. One of my maids didn't want to tag along, so my mom thought it'd be fair to let them both stay at home and rest. BAD MOVE. We had to take turns molly-coddling baby Tara because she was exceptionally cranky from the lack of a good afternoon nap.
Another lesson learnt: my mother is not good under pressure. My sister-in-law and I tend to be the peace makers in the family, with my dad and brother having the volcanic tempers and my mum being the general worrywart. The sudden thunderstorm in the evening DEFINITELY did not help things.

But of course, at the end of the day, we managed whatever crisis came our way and made it out of dinner in one piece, more or less. The food wasn't bad, not too sure what the total bill amounted to, but I'm certain it was close to $1k, if not more. I've come to the conclusion that I do not like suckling pig. It's so god damn freaking oily, it felt like I was eating a heart-attack. The arrowhead shark was what I was looking forward to the most because my brother told me that it is like FUCKING expensive, around $700 per serving? Apparently it's sooooo expensive because firstly, it is insanely difficult to catch. Secondly, it is rarely sighted and lastly, shark cartilage is supposedly the most beneficial and sought after form of cartilage for consumption? I'm not sure how true these facts are, ha-ha, but I just took them at face value. The taste is so-so in my opinion, kind of tastes like tortoise shell in tortoise soup. Ah well, never really had a taste for expensive stuff. Don't particularly fancy abalone, can't see what's so fantastic about veal or foie gras, you get the picture.


Drove home in the torrential rain, which felt like the longest car ride of my life. We were all soaking wet and baby girl kept crying because she was afraid of the thunder :( Biggest irony was that we were finally home, the rain subsided =.= At least baby girl calmed down and was her usual happy self after getting breast fed. Family hung out in the living room for a bit before we decided to cut cake in case baby girl got sleepy and cranky again. My brother and sis-in-law prepared two cakes for my dad - one from them and one from my niece, ha-ha. It's kind of cute, the do-it-yourself cake from The Icing Room reads: "To Ye Ye (爷爷), ♥ Tara". Unfortunately, it didn't exactly survive the ride home from the shopping mall, so it looks somewhat smushed up in the photo, LOL.
Glad to see my dad so happy; he's usually stressed out from work and he got REALLY upset with me last week when I came home literally, fucking wasted. Hope that spending more time at home and with the family is making him feel better =\ He keeps thinking that I'm going through some sort of depression or psychological trouble when in actual fact, I was just being an idiot and taking the notion of having a good time to far. Sigh pie, I will try my best to change and make sure it doesn't happen again :)

Ugh, on an unrelated note, I cannot WAIT for Monday to be over. Going to spend the rest of tomorrow cramming in some last minute revision for Monday's IEA finals. Honestly HATE the module sooooo much, can't wait for the examination to be over and done with. Then I can breathe a little easier and focus on preparing for BP finals on the following Monday. And then, I'll be FREE and can start planning the more nitty gritty details for my post exchange travelling :D

*2 more weeks*

Labels: birthdays, family, food

written at 23:27