A happy day in GZ

{I'm writing my thoughts and events that took place over several blog postings as its a way for me to relive, relate and grieve, so please do bear with me}

Yes, after seeing Dad, knowing that he'll be travelling home with us, I could not help but feel happy. At least, all the past days of planning, organising, worrying has come to an end. At last we're leaving this foreign country, going back home, a place where I'm familar with, a place where Ad would be waiting for me. We've not met since the day he left for Manila which was like 10days ago, it felt like an eternity. Thank God for modern day technology where we can talk on the phone to hear each other's voices, send sms to keep in touch. If not for these two means of communication, I doubt I can pull through this ordeal physically on my own.

Yeah, we'RE going HOME. Its the happiest time I'm saying this to myself, the thought of it makes me want to do a song and dance. I've never felt so happy about going home from another country as it usually means WORK is waiting. This time, it was so totally different.

On tuesday night, we got a heavily subsidised dinner at a resturant which we've been patronising frequently. No, not because we've been having 3breakfast, 2dinners there but because in the morning, Uncle Sunny and hometown relative had something interesting in their porridge when they were having breakfast. Ha ha ha.... the porridge was almost wiped out when they found chewing gum in it. YES, chewing gum.... eeks hor? The resturant manager did not believed it was gum initially until Uncle Sunny did a pull-the-gum-test....

Yep, she acknowledged defeat instantly and gave her namecard, asking Uncle Sunny & hometown relative to come back for dinner and she'll give them special treatment. Heh.... of course we went along. My, the hospitality was impressive. It was at this dinner (after 5 nights) that we realised that there were many different categories of waitressing in the resturant. The entry level was a lady who can barely speak audible mandarin, none of cantonese (Cantonese is like national language for local GZ citizens). The second level were those who have been serving us during these few days, they can understand mandarin and some bits of cantonese and dressed plainly, does their job of serving and clearly the table and leave the guests alone. The last class of waitresses are those who make special effort to dress up, they look not only presentable, but also have good sociable skills at chatting up with the guests, providing a little tea leave lesson as the guests inquired, their eye-contact is piercing, if i'm a guy, I would ask for her number instantly. Her smile was so sweet, her voice was so soft and affectionate, her tone was so appealing, how can anyone resist her? Unlike the SIA stewardess system, the more senior the stewardess, the older they get..... her it seems to be reverse, the more senior they get, the more attractive they get! This could be good reference material eh? ha ha ha...

anyway, we had a great dinner, drank from like the most expensive tea leaves that they had and it looked like this....

a claypot soup that was supposedly boiled for a long time, here in GZ, the taste of the soup is pretty authentic, as good as those we drink at home. In singapore, the true taste of this kind of soup is substituted with MSG.

check out the ingredients to the soup.... (they will usually asked if you'll liked to have the contents scooped out, maybe to confirmed the contents of the soup or for some to nibble on the meat or bones)

in our case, this soup is boiled from baby octopus, some bones and some herbs, the baby octopus gives this soup a characteristic tastes, its delicious, but I'm trying not to think of where all these baby octopus comes from.....

Next is a dish of greens with salted egg. Something which the boys cannot stop eating. I found it abit too salty for my likening and the veggie too bitter, not sure if my tastes bud has changed over the years or there's something interestingly wrong with me, cos these days, I seems to have a more sensitive taste buds and rejecting sweeter/saltier food than usual....


A crunchy dish of "sea-food" is served. Here the GZ-ians have a theory that all seabed dwelling creatures are highly nutritional. Not sure if this is a result of deprived fresh seafood, most of the seabed dwelling edible creatures are usually dried up eg. sea cucumber and this garden eel here. Again I found it extremely salty and cannot understand how these men can chew on it endlessly. Its very crunchy texture was definitely a draw for me to keep reaching out for it until I cannot tahan the saltiness anymore.... could it be the tea that I'm drinking? Could it have brought out the taste of each item? Highlighted their saltiness?


It was approaching 9pm, the start of the preliminaries at the World Cup, this is the first week of the World Cup, the many Asian teams still in the league to be in the finals was a huge draw for the night crowd. The resturant has quickly transformed an empty space in the reception area with tables filled with dim sum goodies on it. They were targetting the Soccer crowd. I guess not all household will have clear direct telecast of the games and it was attractive for them to go to a resturant where food, drinks and toilet facilities in an airconditioned environment were available.

So guess what? Being extremely entreprenuer, they even set up a station infront of the tv. This station has 2drums. This was set up for guests to beat the drums to cheer for their favourite teams. Hee... So interesting, maybe we can try it out in the next World Cup....(now too late to set up the last min requests for putting up artistic performance....)


family jen travel