S.I.M.P.L.I.C.I.T.Y

It was a bright and shiny Saturday, dated the 6th June 2009. The glaring sunshine was enveloped in an entirely blue sky, signifying a beautiful day. Okay, okay, I am not going to speak too flowerily, not to mention the previous two flowery sentences were of great failures in attempting to write a beautiful piece of essay. Haha.

By the way, I woke up at about 9.00 a.m. in the morning that day. In fact, we were all supposed to be in my grandmother’s house for the tea ceremony at around 7 to 8 morning. Hey, I was not late. It was my parents’ decision to go later, because my father and mother always assume that others will definitely come later. Well, that is one thing about my parents, where they always they are always the earliest of them all. Oh well.

Note: If you are wondering to which grandmother am I talking about, I am actually talking about the Yee family. Or in other words, my mother’s side family.

We arrived at grandmother’s house in Bukit Jelutong at about 11.00 p.m. nearing afternoon. At least this time other relatives proved that my parents were wrong. All the the other relatives were already there since 8 or 9 in the morning, and my parents were obviously dumbfounded by that. Haha. Anyway, being a tea ceremony, everyone was to serve tea for grandma, since it was specially held for my grandmother’s 90th birthday. Of course, by the time we were there in Bukit Jelutong, everyone else had done so, except for my family (and one more too, actually). So, we waited for grandma who was not in vision when we were there, so to prepare and to serve tea (“zham chah”) for grandma. We continued staying in the house until about 3.00 p.m. for a while of resting before the formal dinner.

Of course, the first thing I did when in home was to select my preferred formal wear, a light yellowish Valentino Rudy collar shirt (interestingly, with mother-of-pearl buttons) paired with a formal NiC (or Nicole) black long pant, and then passing them to my house maid to have them ironed. Then, as usual of a piggy like me, I went to bed for some nap. Later I woke up at 6.00 p.m. evening, only to find out that I was already a little late, thus having to speed things up. Slightly later after that, I rushed downstairs looking for a suitable shoe to wear, and was instead asked to wear a newly-bought Timberland black leather shoe.

Oh, speaking of the dinner, it was a very formal dinner. My father drove us to the Bangsar Shopping Centre (BSC), which obviously looks high-class from its exterior. The exterior of the shopping complex is somewhat similar to the Starhill Gallery and The Pavilion, you know, the all-glass and beautifully designed exterior. Of course, if you compare the interior designs, BSC proves to be quite high-class itself, though not as high-class as that in Starhill Gallery. And one thing too, BSC has this impressive all-glass lift, which actually can be seen from the outside too. Personally speaking, I still prefer 1 Utama more than any other shopping complexes.

The interior of the Bangsar Shopping Centre.

HOUSE + Co, a home living & lifestyle store on the 3rd floor of Bangsar Shopping Centre.

From the side view of the HOUSE + Co store.

Anyway, quit talking about the architecture already. My father parked the car into the parking lot, and then we all walked to the restaurant. Generally while I was walking, I was looking around at the same time. Beautiful place, I have to say. I was later further impressed by the super-cool glassy lift, and even more when on the third floor. The third floor has only two shops (from what I could notice) and also the ambient lightings, as well as how the entire place looks like. Truly a high-class environment.

Grand Imperial Restaurant

The name of the restaurant is the Grand Imperial Restaurant. Its name may sound grand enough, but I have to admit the exterior and interior of the restaurant are not as grand as it names itself. It does look (above) averagely beautiful, but it lacks the luxuriation and beauty in a high-class environment like this.

The entrance of the Grand Imperial Restaurant.

I personally have nothing to talk about the formal dinner, actually. Oh, initially I did mention there would be more than 200 people attending, right? On that day itself, I only came to find out that there were about 100+ people there, not as much as what I had initially claimed. Haha.

I was sitting at the table allocated for our family and some of the invited relatives from my father’s side family. The food was generally fine with me, with some of them taste pretty good. Well, my opinion on the food seemed to be the opposite for others in my family, because my parents and brothers had been complaining about the lack of ‘tastiness’ of the food. Of course, I do support their views in certain angles. For instance, high-class or expensive restaurants do not always produce delicious, state-of-the-arts food as what we would always expect from the price we pay. Instead, I can agree that some high-class restaurants charge expensively only because of the exclusivity and their reputable names. Similar to the case here, each table of 10 people is worth about RM 800. In addition to that, the grand dinner organized in collaboration with my grandmother’s 90th birthday in the Grand Imperial Restaurant totalled at an amount of 11 or 12 tables. With that, my mother actually told me that the entire dinner worth more than RM 10 000, if you include the total cost of the gift of a Chinese bowl and chopsticks for each single guest.

The first dish is more of an appetizer. I do not know how to name them myself, all I could tell you is that the appetizers were actually dumplings and those small servings. The next dish is a shark fin soup, where the “shark fin” is not too “shark fin”-like. Regardless of that, the shark fin soup still taste delicious, for me. The next one is roasted duck, came with the thick black sauce. Initially I was avoiding it (because my mother always tell me that eating duck is actually poisonous), but then I was then asked to try it. Of course, I tried and I could not stop eating it. Oh well. The following is a steamed silver catfish (Patin). This one taste real good, really. While the dinner was in fact a only-dishes-but-no-rice dinner, I actually ordered rice to eat alongside with the fish. For me, no dinner could be complete without rice, right? Hehe, at least for this one.

Check out my photo album in Facebook, if you would like to look at some photos taken there.

Soon after that, there were some special events going on there. First of all, Adrian Liao’s father, which we always call as Uncle Liao, gave a speech about the celebration. At the same time, he had a ‘translator’ (which was my cousin actually) helping him to translate his text of speech in English to spoken Cantonese. Haha, the speech was meant to be fun and funny, and of course everyone laughed along.

Then, it was my cousin, Adrian Liao to perform on stage, with his guitar. Not to mention he started learning to play guitar 6 months ago, I think. Well, I could assume it was actually his father’s request that Adrian performed on stage that day. My younger brother, Woei Tung was asked to hold the microphone when Adrian was playing the guitar. Haha, both of them, other than me, are always as close as ever, particularly we did many things together when we were younger. At the same time, Woei Tung and Adrian Liao are both of the same age, while my younger brother is actually a little more elder in terms of the exact birth date.

Later came the dessert, which was a soup-like soup. Erm, I do not know what you call it, but you do see that very often in formal dinner. Oh, before that, we presented flower to grandma and making wishes, one at a time, as a sign of respect and filial piety. Of course, everyone was cracking jokes too, when making wishes for grandma through the microphone. Haha. The birthday cake came slightly later after that. It was a gigantic butter cake covered in thick white cream, and I was told it was worth RM 200+ for the 6 kilogramme cake alone.

That was quite everything about the dinner, really. Not as exciting and grand as what you could have initially expected it to be. Haha. After that, everyone bid their farewell at about 11.00 p.m. at night.

Tada.
(Clap, clap, clap)