BBQ @ East Coast Park

BBQ @ East Coast Park, 21 Oct 2006

Firstly, thanks to everyone who made it to the BBQ.

Sorted in order of arrival...the people who showed up
Helen, Darren (Helen's hubby), Desmond, Dawn (Helen's colleague), Karen, Jiahui, Jiawei, Meifeng, Cuiyan, Qinwei, Shimin (My youngest sister), Jiemin & Xiaohui (Jiemin's GF).

As usual, everyone is habitually late. Things didn't exactly went as planned as usual. Desmond bought a new type charcoal that burns cleanly and the water dispenser that did not materialise, but hey ! The PSI (84 average) wasn't too bad and it didn't rain.

There was also this great evening sea breeze till 7pm that gave us a hard time getting the fire going. But once the fire reached the critical self-sustaining point, it was a smokeless fire. The aweful BBQ syndrome (the smell on your clothes) was missing, good riddance ! That's thanks to Desmond's lucky choice (or rather no choice), we had more people around the fire than at the table. The high carbon charcoal burns cleanly without smoke and soot, which will from now on, replace the cheap end of the mill charcoal we are used to.

Hopefully, the new menu suited everyone's taste. I have drew up the food menu with inpirations, or rather copy & paste from the Hawaiian BBQ now at Turf City. Throw in a couple of all-time favorites while doing the last minute shopping at Carrefour Suntec City (Helen, Darren, Jiemin, Xiaohui, Desmond) on Friday, we got the new and improved menu which cost only $12.50 per head. The sore missing all-time favorite was Otah.

Our 3 Ds-cooks (Darren, Desmond and Dawn) did a good job, so I didn't get a chance to make the food inedible aka charred. Kudos to Desmond, Darren and Helen for marinating the meat till the wee hours of 1.30am on Friday after the exhausting shopping spree. We have never been more glad to ditch the almost unused bottle of BBQ sauce we have bought. We no longer have to take the lazy way out : to put BBQ sauce on every single piece of meat.

And we shall not forget Jiemin's contribution of a tub of margarine and Xiaohui's laden for the drinks.

****

Some happenings :

For those who didn't know, Jiawei is now in NIE, training as a Chinese teacher. Mrs Seah will be so proud !

Desmond's tried to launch light sticks ICBMs at me while I was taking a stroll on the beach. But the he ended up getting a earful from 2 ladies near where I was standing when his ICBMs were proven to be as accurate as Mr Kim's made-in-North Korea missles. All 3 strayed off-target by 5 to 8 metres.

For those who didn't hang around till the end, Jiemin made an annoucement that he will be ROMing in the morning on the 24th December 2006. That's a fast whirlwind romance, really fast boy. Time to prepare Ang Bao for his customary wedding, I know he plans to hold one.

****

The night went well. All looks good, and not much food got wasted. Everyone was tired and some of us have to work on Sunday so we called it a day at 12 midnight. As good citizens, we cleaned up the place before we zao.

Afterthoughts

As time goes on, it became apparent that I should call these gatherings TGPS class gatherings anymore. In this case, we have 4 non-classmates (34% of turnout) and the group who usually turned up is pretty much the same. Using the current name alienates the new friends we have, and I believe we should expand this group of friends. As such, please think of a new name for this, as "Jiakhang's & friends gathering" sounds so lame.

Oh please contribute some Ang Kong as I did not take any during the BBQ