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Ooooh, what a fun Saturday. Thanx firstly to Yoyo for planning the outing. You're da man, man.

Wanna know what we did? Huh, do you? Huh, huh? Well, do ya? Tough, you're gonna read it anyway.

Let's start from the beginning. It was about 3-4 days ago when I received a Yahoo IM asking "Hey Losir, do you want to eat 'Pun Choy' this Saturday?" Simple enough question, but I had no idea what 'pun choi' was. It turns out it's phonetically incorrect, and it's more like "Puen Choy". I know it's just an extra 'e', but it made all the difference.

Puen Choi is a Chinese dinner consisting of only 1 dish. Basically, it comes in one huge gigantic bowl, with layers of food piled onto each other. So the first layer will be fishball, veggies, duck, roast pork, then below that is steamed chicken, different type of roasted pork, different veggies, etc. Until the very last layer, where it's mostly a soup. I've never had it before, and it was an experience. The food was so plentiful, 9 people at one table could not finish it all. Our table did about half before we were so stuffed, not one person could eat another bite.

Did I mention that there were 26 people who went today? But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Of course I wanted to try "Puen Choy". Why would I deprive myself of such an experience. I've never had it before, and I didn't know what to expect (the description above was only written after I knew how it looked); so I was eager to say yes. Plus it's been several weeks since I've hung out with Yoyo and his bunch. So yes, yes, and yes.

The place to eat it is in London Ontario, it would take 2.5 hours from Toronto to London. It seemed like a long way, and we weren't going to just drive there, eat, and go home. We wanted to make a day of it. By Kitchener, there's a play park called Eastgate Park that had Go Karts, batting cages, rock climbing, driving range, mini golf and a whole lot more. It was decided that since Kitchener falls between the route from T.O. to London, we might as well stop for several hours to play some games. Brilliant.

Fast forward Friday. The plan was to meet at the Company on Saturday morning at 10:30am and head out from there. However since there were also a bunch of people based in Mississauga, we were going to meet "on the way". That is, everyone had a walkie talkie (Motorola Talkabouts), the T.O. group would radio us when they were close to the highway entrance from Mississauga.... Plan didn't exactly work, as some people, (who's names I shall leave out) were tardy and slow. To make a very uninteresting story short, we never did hook up, until lunch time at Booger Thing.

Yada Yada, when we got to EastGate Park, we first played at the batting cages. There were 3 speeds, slow, medium, and fast. At first, people tried the slow batting cage, and everyone was posing and having a good time swinging at the ball that lazily came floating by. However, soon people were talking smack, and challenges of trying the fast batting cage was being said. Fido had said earlier that Special-K could hit fastballs better than him. We didn't believe it, so we called his bluff. Commanding Special K to try, she obliged.

True to form, out of 12 balls, she made at least 2 solid contacts, and several foul tips. Not bad for a girl. I don't want to sound sexist, but how many girls do you know that can hit a fast ball? I don't know many. Heck I certainly can't.

Next came TN, who was all like "If a chick can do it, I can too." So in went the token, and out came the fast balls. And you know what? He wiffed every single time. He couldn't even touch the ball. We were all laughing and hollering at his misfortune and lack of form. Take that, you sexist pig!

Then Fido gave it a try. True to his words, Special K was still the best hitter of the day.

Next came little ol' me. I've never been a decent baseball player. I can field and throw pretty good, but when it came to hitting the ball, I'm pretty unco-ordinated. I tried anyway, I mean, if TN couldn't hit one, where's the shame?? I went in there, doning the helmet and inserted my token. Before I even had time to set up, the first ball flew by me....

When the 12 ball had flown past, I had hit one ball poorly, and made about 3 foul tips. Pretty pathetic, as I didn't make solid contact on any one. I was upset at myself for such a poor showing, so I scream, "So what? At least I have a motorcycle." Which, now on hindsight made me sound like a sore loser, of which I can be one. I'm pretty competitive at times, and the when I can't step up to the challenge, I get mad at myself.

Next went mute, who I didn't really bother to watch, because I was talking to several other people. When he came out, I scooted back in, wanting to try once more. This time I redeemed myself, as I made at least two to three solid hits. Nothing great, but at least they weren't crappy ass pop fly looking thingys. Good enough I guess.

Next event was go-karts. Which, when all things said, wasn't really that much fun. It was dumb, because after every single lap, you had to stop and give a ticket to continue playing, which is really silly, and kind of ruined the flow. However, we got pictures of everybody with their helmets on, which is rather hilarious.

Then we played a round of mini-golf. It was really fun in the beginning, but towards the 13th hole, it got pretty stale. The courses were too hard. For me, mini-golf holes should all be possible to get a hole in one, I mean, it could be extremely difficult, but at least physically possible. Not so with these holes. Some of them were so long, I don't know anyone who can put that hard. Also, because there was 5 of us in a group, and a lot of "cheating" was going on, I soon lost interest in keeping score, which made the game really boring. So we stopped at hole 13.

Last we hit the driving range. I'm not a golf guy. I love the sport and the idea of driving 300 yards, but golf I find is one sport that requires real technique. Well, suffice to say that Tiger Woods won't have to worry about me, like ever. I did make 2-3 good shots, and 1 really nice drive. I was happy with that one, because they say, you can hear a well hit shot off the tee. Okay, don't think it was like a 200 yard drive even, more like 150, but at least I felt good about hitting it, and that's really the point.

Finally, at 6pm, we went to the restaurant where they served Puen Choy. Since there were 26 of us, we had 3 tables of 8, 8, and 9. When the food came, we were all optimistic about finishing it. The owner said that if we finished it, there'd be a special prize awarded..... probably a bottle of antacid if you ask me.

There's just no way 5 guys and 4 girls could eat that much food. I ate the most at my table, but we couldn't even polish half of the bowl. There was 1 table that was doing very good, so I helped out there by the near end of it, trying to at least finish one of the bowls. Here's where my social commentary kicks in. During my college "lean" years, food wasn't exactly an assured thing. So I take special offence when people use food as a toy. This is how I felt tonight, each table trying to out eat each other, but without really enjoying the meal. It was for bragging rights more than it was anything else. When I realized what I was doing, I felt pretty bad.

The lady did offer us doggie bags to take home, but the food wasn't really that good, and after sitting in its own soup for that long, the food actually didn't taste very good either. So we didn't doggie bag any home. What a waste. I won't do that again!

Anyhow, to end this, my friends and I had a wicked, wild time. Yoyo, who organized this little get together and getting lost from lunch to EastGate Park was pretty funny. And the fact that mute once again didn't make any attempts to hit on the girl that he was "set up" with, was pretty darn predictable too. He also made his usual gay joke, when I was sticking out my chest to show I've been working out. "Hey Losir, I can see your nipples." Yeah, real cute pal, just admit you like men, and end this charade.

Okay, that's it. I'm spent, but happy. I love big group outings, it's so fun.

....I had a McD's chocolate sundae with fudge at the end of the night.


posted by losir at 1:34 AM