11 may night -- the night reality TV came true Pt 2

continued from part 1:

oh yes. forgot to say. the original invitation told them to come at 8pm.

19.10--we got to surfers at about this time. last hugs to aunt suvy who was always so nice going out of the way sending us here and there. and then zj and i brought our luggage up first. and i came back down, and got a bit worried as the other 3 weren't back yet, and it looked like a storm was brewing. well within a minute, their silhouettes appeared, all of them carryig huge plastic bags of stuff. i felt really bad because of the key issue, and making them buy and carry all this barang and have to rot at the supermarket area. so i'd say that

PROBLEM 6: we had 3 especially disgruntled friends who were already not in the best physical and mental state from dreamworld earlier that day, and moods probably exacerbated by this whole grocery saga.

and furthermore

PROBLEM 7: hui ling was really sick, she was feverish and all, and at first she was trying to help..but she looked really bad..so we told her to go and slp, and that we'd handle the cooking and all.

yes, all this and we hadn't even started cooking yet.

19:20---i had a sms come in from wayne (which came in at 19:08, just that i read it only like 15 mins later) which was:

LIFESAVER 1 (probably the one and only, really): he was still at work at the time he sent the message so he'd definitely be late, cause he needed to get home and get changed and then pick nathan then come into surfers. so that bought us more time.

so when i got to the apartment with them..we were checking out the cutlery and plates and etc etc. and they definitely needed a wash. and we were like ahh where's the detergent...we had to wash down all our crockery and cutlery before starting on anything.

in the meantime, i had to go get the stuff i needed to get. the 3 of em told me that they only bought 1 packet of microwaveable rice..and it didn't look enough because it didn't look like the kind in US which expanded. so they told me to get more. so i walked briskly down to coles this time..and thankfully it was still open. first thing i did was to go look for the mushrooms.

PROBLEM 8: i think i had to get like 12 mushroom caps, and at the end of the day, all the mushrooms there were like bruised and battered and cui. and i was like struggling so hard to find 12 proper looking not-too-ugly mushrooms.

and for the fish, there weren't many options too, and so i got the nicest looking affordable fish fillets --which were the hake fillets.

so i paid up and left. and guess what?

PROBLEM 9: scatterbrained me forgot all about buying the rice till i got back to the apartment and was like OH CRAP.

19:54--walking back from coles, at the bottom of the apartment, received a message from wayne saying that he was gonna be leaving his house and would be there in 45 mins. essentially, we therefore only had 45 mins left to finish up everything. and i hadn't even started on either of my dishes yet.

when i got back to the apartment, zj was lamenting terribly. and she had good reason to lament.

PROBLEM 10: we only had 2 pots. 1 pot was a pot with a relatively large circumference, but NO COVER. the other pot was absolutely TINY. and we were having major logistical difficulties, with not enough big plates and bowls to put our large quantities of raw material. that night, our 'menu' was

coke chicken, citrus fish, fried veggie (which was cabbage in the end because that's what they bought), baked mushrooms with cheese, and fried egg with tomato. so the status right then was ..

--coke chicken cooking in big pot with plate as cover.
--no place to put cabbages, so all in aluminium trays supposed to be for mushrooms.
--mushrooms untouched
--egg being beaten and tomatoes being cut.
--tiny pot not in use yet.

and,

--40 minutes left to finish everything.

so i found out about the rice, and weibin decided to go buy more rice.

and i got started with the mushrooms, because the big pot was then in use and i couldn't do anything to the fish. and irene told me to tell her what to do, so i could go start working on the fish. so irene officially took over the mushroom dish.