Exhale

Something strange just happened. A group of people just burst into my room and stood behind me as I chatted online. And they never said a word to me! And a very weird bunch of people too - my younger brother, his genius/child prodigy math tutor, the latter's father who is from China and speaks with a strong Shangainese accent and my own dad who doesn't speak a word of Chinese but gets by with lots of guesswork. So the tutor's father started a conversation in Chinese and my dad just listened and somehow managed to reply in English. Meanwhile, my brother and his tutor hogged my bed and started talking about Final Fantasy and flipping through my FFX2 guidebook. And I'm just sitting there, like, part of the wall! Geez. I mean if you're going to invade my room, at least say hi.

Had a steamboat dinner at Gwen's house yesterday. Met up with Pea and Steph at Gwen's place and went up to help Gwen prepare all the food, though I think the 3 of us were more a hindrance than a help. Gwen found a huge bag of ice and told us to break it, and Steph just pounded it really hard with her hand and started swearing. So Gwen found this nasty looking meat pounder and started smashing the ice with it. Then she and Pea got into this rather inane argument.

Pea: Its a meat pounder.
Gwen: No. Its a crab pounder.
Pea: How do you know?
Gwen: Because it is la! Haiyo! *smashes a whole block of ice*
Pea: Hey its not my fault your family bought a meat pounder and used to kill crabs.
Gwen: Tsk...whatever. *smashes more ice*
Pea: Sheesh. *stalks into kitchen* And Steph! Keep fanning the coal!
Steph: *doing her maid impersonation* Yes Mam.

And the two of them just went at each other the whole night. It was pretty hilarious. I got quite a lot of it on film while I was slacking around, video-ing them.

Me: Hey steph! Say something for the camera!
Steph: Hi...*waves*
Pea and Gwen are visible in the background, in the kitchen cooking. They are also very audible*
Pea: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?? GWEN GET HERE NOW...OY! *orange flames shoot up from the stove*
Gwen: TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!
Steph: *in undertones* Ok they were just on the verge of killing us.
Pea: *from the kitchen* ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME?!
Gwen: PEA STOP IT ...!
Me: *heading toward the kitchen with camera* Hello! What's going on?
Pea: JEANNE YOU BETTER GET THAT CAMERA OUT OF MY FACE BEFORE I KNOCK IT OUT -
Me: I'm not taking any pictures! Its only a video...erm...a preparation video.
Gwen: *bent over the stove* A video of what? Cinderella?
Pea: *snorts* What preparation.
Gwen: *peering into the pot* ...Give it more time.
Pea: *harrassed* Don't! Leave it already...It smells la!
Gwen: Yaar...but unfortunately the fire outside is damn weak la...
Pea: No! I see steam coming out already! Just leave it!
Steph: *doing her maid impersonation again* M'am stop fighting with sir!
Gwen: *glares at Pea* Why am I sir? I'm the one who's cooking and cleaning and you're the one who's doing nothing and eating the food I cook!

Meanwhile Steph and I just sat around the steamboat fanning the coal very vigorously. I swear I saw sparks! And I kept saying so, but Steph and Pea told me I was hallucinating. Hm. In the end we just took all the raw food and boiled it seperately over the stove because we couldn't get the steamboat hot enough. Spent the rest of the night at the table gossiping and talking rubbish.

Then came cleaning up. God, what a nightmare. Took about over an hour, and I accidently tipped over the steamboat so all the ash spilled out onto the kitchen floor. Gwen and I used excessive amounts of paper towels to clear up the mess before switching to toilet paper.

Pea: *staring* Why are you using toilet paper?
Gwen: Because we're dealing with shit.

Stayed until a little over 10pm cleaning up. Hah. But it was really fun. Pea tried taking a video with my camera and she got a good shot of what Gwen called 'The Nightmare' in the sink. It was also then that Pea went 'Sheesh, we should've just gone to Seoul Gardens' and went off to scrub the dishes. Sigh. Oh well.

posted by Jeanne @ 1:16 AM