Food With Friends

So I finally decided to act like the social being anthropologists tell me I’m meant to be, and got a life.

Friday lunch with Vikram at a Chinese in what I think is now called H20 Zone, where our suspicions that we’d been given a tourist menu (photos accompanying every menu item) were confirmed when we peeked in another menu (which they told us was for “drinks”) and found it photoless and about $2 cheaper across the board. So we ordered our crispy baby squid (another ticked item on the summer food list) and sambal brinjal conspicuously from the photoless menu, and were charged accordingly.

Dinner with the Twins and their parents involved more ticking of the food list once they’d discovered a list existed and insisted on getting me satay and a baby coconut in addition to my chicken rice. We drifted and lounged and chatted around the Raffles Town Club pool, probably well-raisined by the time we got out to do girly things like hair masques and steam-rooms. There was the pleasant feeling of lives that had moved on and developed almost wholly independently of each other but which could still be described out of more than politeness (because we wanted to), and responded to out of more than avoiding awkwardness (because the connections that power conversation were still there). They still refer to me as “hoggie”, short for hedgehog, because I am apparently “prickly but cute.” I would have suggested just “cactus” instead myself, but suppose old friends are allowed to do things like tell me I’m cute without being killed with blunt objects.