Dining Out on a Stormy Evening

After our unsuccessful attempt shopping for a set of headphone for my boy's ipod touch, we decided to go for our dinner.

I started asking my children what they wish to have for dinner tonight. They had no suggestions. The only idea my boy gave was to have something piping hot & spicy. I asked them again. This time I said, "Rice? Noodle? Non-rice? Non-noodle?" They said, "Let's have rice & non-rice. But my boy added, " It must be spicy, ok" "So, what do all of you want???" We laughed.

We got into our car. Papa asked, "So, mummy, where are we heading now?" I thought for a little while & told him to drive along Beach Road. I remember there are many interesting eating places out there. My boy reminded his dad to drive slowly along Beach Road so that we could take the time to choose which restaurant we would like to stopped for.

Finding nothing we liked, so Pa made a left turn into one of the lanes, still nothing enticing, then he made another turn. Finally, we landed somewhere near Haji Lane. Looking for spicy food in that area surely will not be a problem. They always have many Muslim, India-Muslim, India & Turkish restaurants around there. We parked the car along the side of the lane & walked into Haji Lane. Before we could get into the next lane to start our search for a restaurant, we felt rain drops & more rain drops. Without a second thought, we agreed that we had to quickly get back into our car & go look for another place to eat. The moment we got into the car, rain poured. Gosh! we were fast. We laughed again.

So, we started driving somewhere again. The rain poured more heavily. The criteria then for our eating place must be somewhere with a sheltered carpark. It would be too wet even if we would to get out of our car with our umbrellas. We headed to the eastern side of the island & still could not settle for anything there. We passed by Mountbatten Road Food Centre. We knew there were many good stores we would like to patronize but the rain was too heavy for us to make it there. Still raining heavily, in fact more heavily. My boy said we must have been driving into the eye of the storm. He suggested we should drive away from that area. Papa suggested why not drive to The Swissotel the Stamford & eat at Kopi Tiam. "Yes! we all agreed. Why didn't we thought of it just now so we didn't have to drive away from that zone." We like their roti prata fried hokkien mee & beef hor fun.

We headed back to the central. True enough, the rain got lesser. But instead of heading straight to the second floor of the hotel, we passed by Market Place & detoured. Looked at my watch, it's 9pm & still walking around looking for somewhere that would stop us from searching on. Thai Express? Shimbashi Soba? Sapporo Ramen? Out of the Pan? The Soup Spoon? Ben & Jerry's? Finally, we stood at the entrance of Aerin's. The waiter was about to bring us to the seats & we apologized because we changed our mind. We knew that was not what we wanted although we always love the food there. We walked further & saw some people queueing outside Din Tai Fung 鼎泰丰 . Arh... that's the place & all finally agreed to settle for that restaurant. We would have rice & non-rice; and spicy food as well.

We ordered two clear soup chicken with noodle (non-rice)(recommended), one pork chop soup with noodle (non-rice), fried prawn pancake (non-rice)(recommended), 2 large trays of xiao long bao (non-rice)(recommended) & fried rice with prawns & eggs (rice)(recommended). Wanted to order the sour & spicy soup to complete one of the many items of request my boy listed for our dinner earlier but we found no more space in our stomachs. We laughed again.

While walking back to the carpark, my girl stopped us to buy her her favourite donuts at the Donut Factory. She picked her favourite Oreo, Double Chocolate & Hazelnut. My boy picked his Blueberry. Papa picked his Mocca.

We got into the car, tuned in the radio for our music, started talking again, drove on; still raining but raining lesser & lesser as we got nearer towards home. Along Holland Road, there was no sign of any rainfall at all. The stretch of road was dry, the signages along the road were dry & our carpark was dry.