Week 1 - A Week In Melaka (Part 1)

Because I have my periodic closing this week, and also for the fact that I do not have enough leaves to take for 2 weeks, I kinda abandoned Ben to fend for himself during the day for this week. XD Well it wasn't that bad cos I took Friday off, which means he only has to find his own lunch and visit Melaka himself for 4 days.


Monday - 22nd September 2008

Today's actually my mum's birthday. But since I'm not too bad a planner, I made arrangements with my mum (and dad and bro) to have her birthday dinner on Saturday so I can have dinner with Ben tonight.

So it was the first day of closing... that means I get off work late. I prayed there were no issues regarding the allocations and that the directors finish their meeting fast (because I can only run allocations after the figures have been confirmed and no adjustments are made by the directors during the meeting... which actually starts at 5:00pm wtf). Hallelujah~! They came out of the meeting at 6:00pm and no adjustments were necessary. I had already run the 'test' run and checked all the figures I could while the directors were having their meeting, so I saved about 45 minutes there. Completed my work at about 7:00pm (yay!) and headed home for a quick shower before dinner.

We had dinner at Secret Recipe. Figured it's more convenient to just eat dinner at a place that sells cake so he can just get his slice of cake as dessert... rather than eating somewhere else then heading to a cake shop and needing to spend money on another round of drinks. So I had some rice with chicken chop in BBQ gravy while Ben got a chicken burger. Mine wasn't bad, but Ben's burger was so hard.... like they overfried the damn chicken. Oh, we had ice-cream too cos it was part of their buka puasa promotion where every meal gets a free ice-cream. The promotion actually stated free ice-cream and sirap (syrup drink) but when we asked the waitress, she said the promotion was only for the ice-cream and the sirap was for other locations. Bleh it was clearly stated right there... but I didn't want to cause a ruckus so we ordered our drinks.

After dinner, Ben ordered a slice of moist chocolate cake which he said tastes pretty good (thank god... cos I'm worried everything he eats will taste bad... like the beef noodle and the otak-otak and the hard burger) and I ordered a slice of walnut brownie, my favourite. What sucks is that I was so full from dinner that I couldn't finish my brownie :( I hate wasting food... I finished my walnuts though cos they're the expensive portion of the cake lol. Walking back to the car and almost getting in, Ben remembered he left his camera at the shop. +_+ So he ran back and saw the waiter outside of the shop looking for him. *bonks Ben* So forgetful.... I wanted to follow too so I locked the car and headed back there.... and in the dark, I stepped on some soft soil and my shoes and heels and part of my feet got dirty. And it's soft soil due to oil or something oily cos the earth was oily.... so it was teh YUCK!

And I think now... for the picture some of you've been waiting for....

Waiting for our food to come at Secret Recipe



Tuesday - 23 September 2008

It is still closing week and although my 2nd day of closing isn't as bad as the first day, I still can't get off work THAT early. Today's plan was simple though, meet up with Lai Ching at Golden Mansion to give Ben a taste of a Chinese dinner, and maybe adjourn to a cafe for a drink and chat.

We had bai kut wang (pork ribs in sweet sauce), thai style chicken, some vegetable and shark's fin soup. First, ordering the shark's fin soup was probably a bad decision because although I wanted Ben to try out this dish, I kinda forgot it contained seafood. So after one sip, Lai Ching and I were left to finish up the whole bowl. Man, I think I had 5 bowls of that +_+ And that wasn't the only thing we had to finish....

Well there was a huge culture shock for Ben right here. We all had our plates of rice, and the dishes were in the middle. How we eat is we take whatever food we want on our plate, and eat it. If we need more, we take again. From Ben's upbringing, he takes all he wants on his plate and finishes what he took. So he was kinda having a culture shock seeing us taking a little bit, then taking again, then taking again. I guess the only logical explanation I could think of is that, for Chinese dinners there are usually about 10 people seated at the table. So I guess we don't want to grab a huge portion of a dish cos we're afraid others might not have the opportunity to take their fair share too. What was stubborn though, was Ben found it so hard to adapt to how we eat or how we do some things. Sometimes I feel like he's so stuck to certain rules of eating or rules of doing things that it can't be bent or made more flexible. You'll know what I'm talking about when we proceed further into his trip here.

Besides the culture shock, there were two other memorable things that happened during dinner. First, is that there was a huge group of elderly men having steamboat, 2 tables to be exact... and oh my goodness they were SOOOOOO loud and noisy. We could barely hear each other talking through all that noise! Second, is that Ben kept drinking his Chinese tea that the waitress had to refill his glass more than 10 times! I should have just told her to leave the jug on the table and let him refill it himself whenever he wants to lol.

Anyways, food was a lot (especially since Ben hardly ate his fair share of the dishes) and by the time we were done, we were SOOOOOOO full that I didn't feel like adjourning to a cafe for yet another drink. We suggested for Lai Ching to join us at the hotel lobby or to lepak by the poolside and chit chat but she wasn't really keen on the idea. So we parted ways and that marked the end of Day 3 in Melaka... as well as this post... for now.



Coming up:
Week 1 - A Week In Melaka (Part 2)