So the past few days have been spent visting friend's spanking new places. I've seen Chai/Chen/Ruben/Hardeep's place, which had a very excellent new bathroom and er, not much else to shout about. Then there was Chris Rowley who I followed back to his pad along Grey's Inn Road (about a 5 minute walk away) which is really quite nice but doesn't have a dining table. Today, I went to Aneesh's place which is INSANELY NICE. The bathroom is like a 5 star hotel's bathroom and they have new leather couches and all. Drool. The only thing not so awesome was the fact that Aneesh's room is probably the size of Harry Potter's room in the Dursley household. Apparently it used to be a storage closet... that is somehow prettier than the rest of my new apartment.
Oh well. Give some, take some. My flat might not be very nice or very pretty, but it's functional. There is an electric heater with hot water on demand (definitely beating Passfield and their boiler's roulette like game of hotcoldhotcold water), a dining table, and all the things I need to keep me happy at a bare minimum. I could probably use a shoe rack though, perhaps I should get one from Argos. The floor's a little cold, but it's not dodgily carpeted. The desk is old and the drawers look like something my grandfather bought when he set up his first printing business in Singapore in 1960s, but it's nice and big. Plus since all the furniture is so old, there is no way I can be accused of making scratch marks or damaging any of the furniture any further.
I guess I like my place-ish. Now if only I could stop accumulating so much shit, which clogs up the room, and then I'd be happy.
-----
The past week has also seen to some burst of West End activity. Last Thursday I saw Avenue Q with Dexter and Jon Kong, and today I watched Deathtrap with Aneesh and Nikki. Both were excellent and worth every bit of the £20/£25 I forked out. Avenue Q was a bit dodgy though since I noticed the audience did not laugh very much. Instead Jon, Dexter and I were laughing like mad, joined by the (rather obnoxious) group of extremely Singaporean Singaporeans. The Brits on the other hand, remained stoic. I suppose the usual time of In-Your-Face humour was lost on them. Pity.
Today was Deathtrap, which was really one of the best plays I've seen in a while. Sorry Singapore, after seeing The Lady from Dubuque and Blackbird, I have come to the conclusion that you are a long way from West End standards. Deathtrap cemented this idea in my mind, perhaps permanently. Well acted, with lots of twists and turns and sudden surprises, it was excellent from start to finish. Just when things started to look dull, something shocking would happen, giving one a fright. I jumped and grabbed Aneesh at least twice in shock. Lovely, lovely black comedy.
-----
Today I had lunch with Swan Yee at Cam Phat, a Vietnamese restaurant opposite Rasa Sayang in Chinatown. We wanted to order individual bowls of pho, and share a starter of spring rolls. When the waiter came to take our order, he said we weren't allowed to mix the lunch special menu (with £5.50 pho) and the normal menu (which had the spring rolls). If we wanted to order spring rolls, we would have to pay 50p more each for our pho, THEN get the ability to order spring rolls. This made absolutely no sense.
First off, the lunch special menu merely listed dishes from the normal menu at 50p less. The dishes were not different in any way, and the pricing is obviously meant to draw in the lunchtime crowd.
Secondly, it was not a set menu. They were merely individual portions of noodles.
Thirdly, by not allowing people to mix meals and trying to charge them 50p more for ordering extra food that they had to pay for anyway, they just took away all incentive to order more food.
I pointed this out to the waiter, but he just repeated monotonously that we only have to pay 50p more each for the privilege of getting to order spring rolls. I told him it was logically unsound. He ignored me. God, how the hell are these people still in business?
No comments:
Post a Comment