11 may night -- the night reality TV came true Pt 3

bah it is 3 am and i am still typing part 3. as i said, this would be a very very tiring entry because so many things went wrong in that short span of one night. gah. tired.

ok from now on, all the times are vague guesses, because i was too busy being very super stressed out, and there are no more smses to show me timings anymore, so yes.

~~20:30--
zhujun finished with her coke chicken which tasted good to her immense relief, and so she transferred it to a serving dish which was more like a plastic container thingy. and den i had to wash the pot..which had like remains of maillard reaction stuck to the bottom of the pot and was really hard to scrub with the meagre amount of detergent we had in plastic sachets provided by the apartment. yah and i was happily (ok not happily, stressily) scrubbing scrubbing scrubbing for the next 5-10 mins and hoping for dear life the sticky stains would go off quickly and i could cook the fish.. when zj's phone rang and we were like OH SHIT.

status update:
--coke chicken ready.
--mushrooms prepared and ready to go into the oven
--cabbages still sitting in some other bowl waiting to be fried
--fish and ingredients reqd for fish prepared but not cooked yet
--eggs and tomatoes prepared and waiting to be fried.
--tiny pot still sitting there and looking clean and pretty.

zj answered, spoke to him for a bit, and held the phone up to my ear with my hands still suddy. i tink the pot was nearly done then alr.. so i think irene took over the cleaning and finished it up. yep so wayne and nathan were already downstairs. obviously, we were less than 50% ready. and wayne asked me if i could look for a corkscrew because he had a bottle of wine but he didn't bring something to open it with. and to their surprise (and not to ours as we'd already experienced first hand the paltry state of the kitchen that we had to work with) there wasn't a corkscrew. anw i told them we were totally NOT READY yet. so they said they'll go into surfers to try to buy a corkscrew, and buy nathan a non-alcoholic drink. haha.

i had to go down and let them into the garage, so i was like ahh zj since u know how to cook the fish can you start on it first.. so i went and let them in. and i hopped into the car..and at the gate u had to like press the sensor to the gate-opener..and they had to wind down the window to do that..i was gonna stretch my hand out of the window when wayne wound up the window again. and i'm like okay here we go again some things don't change. first thing u do when u time with the two of them laughing and snickering..like i stick out my hand and then the window starts going up and i was like nearly going to strangle him already when he finally let me open the gate :| and so i let them exit to go on their little surfers rendevous and plunged myself back into the warzone.

PROBLEM 11: zj was cooking the fish..and she was trying to flip it but it broke apart..fish being flaky and fragile...so i took over the fish..and she started on the egg and tomatoes.. for my fish.. i had to cook it in 3 batches..cos the pieces were big..and in the end.. due to the very unsuccessful attempts of trying to keep the fillets in one piece.. i decided ahh forget it they don't need to know that it was supposed to be in one piece! so i just 'chopped' everything up so it became like fish slices in citrus sauce. the sauce turned out alright, but when i tastd the fish i was like awwww crap this fish is super fishy. so the meat was like no good :(

PROBLEM 12: i was trying to put in some pepper (from a plastic bag) onto the fish..when i suddenly lost control and a whole PILE of black pepper went onto the fish and i was like ahhh oh shit oh shit oh shitttttt. we managed to scoop most of the pile up and save the situation tho.

PROBLEM 13: zj was having a lot of trouble trying to fry her tomatoes and egg in the tiny pot. and she said she never fried it so ugly-ly before and she was quite traumatized. irene was also quite appalled that we were gonna be serving food in this kind of state to guests. and yes of cos, by then my 'perfect idea' thing was totally gone and i was highly regretting ever suggesting this..but it was too late. things never do turn out the way they seem eh.

PROBLEM 14: in the meantime, we told weibin (i think it was weibin if i am not wrong) to cook the rice..so he tried cooking one packet...but for some reason, it came out hard and gross and we were like D: and so we tried to salvage that packet of rice..that was because the pro rice cooker hl was sick and resting :(

PROBLEM 15: i put my mushrooms into the oven.. and when they came out, they didn't look like what it was originally supposed to look like.. and it was rather ugly.cos the cheese didn't brown well and it was just a weird colour after it melted. so it was probably the oven's problem, or the cheese, tho i specified a brand there for them to buy..they mixed it up with my instructions for the rest of the ingredients, which was to buy the cheapest..so they bought the cheapest packet of cheese.

and then after everything was done, we had the veggies to fry still. weibin bravely took up the endeavour. we had like damn alot of cabbage, and that tiny pot. so he had to fry the cabbage in 3 batches in that tiny pot, which was highly challenging.

and hl had gotten up at the end..and she was helping to prepare the rice..i think the later 2 containers of rice were not too bad haha. long live the pro rice cooker.

by then, wayne and nathan were back and came up to the apartment..everyone said hi to everyone.. and i locked them out in the balcony briefly....and then we served up the unappetizing looking food, had a bit of a panic because

PROBLEM 16: we thought they didn't have glasses and wine glasses as well..but found them in a top cupboard eventually..and

PROBLEM 17: there were 7 of us, but only 6 chairs. a bit of a musical chair dilemma eh. so in the end we put like 2 chairs together and 3 of us sat on one chair and poor irene who was sandwiched in the centre next to a right hander and a left hander on the wrong sides had VERY little space to eat.

yup so finally at like hrmm.. what 9:45?

we finally settled down to dinner. i remember wayne making a short little toast at the start to thank us for the dinner and i tink all of us were really paiseh for the state of the food we were serving him and nathan..me and zj especially i think. and i think we were joking about masterchef or judging or critquing the food or something like that..and he went.. well u guys already get full marks. for the effort. and when i heard that i felt even more bad because they'd have to tahan crappy food at this time of the night where they'd be absolutely starving..and still say such nice things to us.