There was a simple home celebration with my family members with red eggs and a birthday cake (strawberry-flavored) and that sort of took care of my lunch part I of the day. After that, my mother, in her usual festive mood, was raring to go to the nearby market for another round of Chinese New Year preparatory shopping and I obliged so off to the market we go. She bought and I lugged quite a few items - a box of mandarin oranges, a couple more CNY decorations, loads of vegetables, some pork cuts and some garnishing and condiment items. Lunch was eaten at a normal coffee shop with much fanfare because the items were pretty heavy and the weather was too hot t
o move elsewhere.The afternoon was spent reading and finishing up on a book called Conquests of Alexander The Great. I like reading the occasional classic epic and history books because they provide knowledge of how the known civilized world came about. The book detailed how Alexander became a leader of the ancient Greece through a combination of wisdom, cunning and coercion, leading an improved and united Greek army across many different lands to conquer them, spread the Greek cultures and customs, whilst slowly assimilating other civilizations' practices.
Alexander was both being praised as a brilliant diplomat and strategist, as well as being criticized as an arrogant and overly-ambitious leader. In any case, I thought he was still a pivotal person in bringing about the spread of various cultures and languages which made the world what it is today. With the book finished, I took a nice, lazy two-hour nap from 3.30pm to 5.30pm. Yes, be jealous, because naps are becoming a luxury activity in the hectic-paced Singapore but my work and lifestyle grant the occasional naps and I love my sleep, away from the crazed rush of the world whenever I can.
By evening time, I got myself ready for the evening celebration with my VIP friends. The Changed Man had planned for an evening celebratory dinner at Melben Seafood Restaurant, famous for its crab special dishes so all the VIP friends who could turn up converged there at. After about one hour of waiting, nibbling on peanuts, chatting away at the economy, Obama's inaugural speech, the work, the bedsheets (yes, the ladies were yakking about which bedsheets to buy) the food finally arrived.
We ordered some fried vegetables with mushrooms, some fried yam sticks, and some really delicious buns which we used to dip in the sauce of the crab special dishes. Not in the picture were a dish of black pepper pork ribs as well.
We also tucked in two crab special dishes - this one is the butter crab and it was really nice with thick crab meat hidden inside those huge pincers. The sauce was buttery with a tangy peppy taste. The other was the claypot crab with noodles which was also very delicious. I did not take a picture of it because two VIP friends were too close to the claypot. They don't like their identities to be made known on the Internet thus so I could only take pictures of the food instead. Sorry for the few photos taken because I was too busy talking and eating with my hands. Hahaha.
The aftermath of the celebratory dinner, which lasted about one and a half hours, over delicious food, hilarious jokes, coy teasing and satisfied smiles. As I rarely eat crab during my normal meals, I thoroughly enjoyed the dinner, nibbling through every possible nook and corner of the crab to find those succulent meat. Blurp~~Hahaha.It was a good celebration - needless of any presents when the company is so fun-loving and joyous. These are extremely busy VIPs who took precious time and effort to convene together for my birthday. My grateful thanks to each of them! ^__^
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