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| 29/07/01 Sunday TRIPPING TO JB PLANTEATER: It's been a long time since I saw the early Sunday sun but I had to wake up early in order to get to Kranji MRT by 10:30am. Anyway, with a rumbling stomach I sms Wash if there's any breakfast I could buy at Kranji only to get a crude reply that one could only find HORSE FEED available. Lucky good old friendly Eunos had lots of breakfast choices. We were all rather punctual and after filling out custom forms provided generously by Inu's mama, we headed happily to the Causeway. I forgot how long we had to wait at the customs but we amused ourselves with other people. There was an uncle who suddenly shouted to the guy at the next line, "Ok! Ok! I tell you, we don't stare, ok? Gentleman's talk, you don't stare at me, I don't stare at you, this is gentleman's talk." I had always thought it was impossible to get into a fight just because of a stare but after looking at the fierce uncle, I decided that I, too, should not stare at him. The first thing that we did was to head right for lunch and we settled quickly at a Japanese Restaurant. Wash and I were seated separately from the others because there were not enough seats and we wasted no time at our orders. The sushi chef gave us a dirty look and asked us to hold onto our continuous orders as he quickly tried to prepare them before he forgot. We attacked the manager and made him memorize the rest of our orders only to receive a more dirty look from the same sushi chef when the manager recited our orders to him. We had shamelessly ordered plates of sashimi because the prices were only half of the ones we got here. However, the salmon sashimi was not defrosted properly and we could taste bits of frozen ice. The sushi was not done the traditional way either because we saw the sushi chef taking ready-made slabs of rice rolls and just placing the piece of fish or meat on top. It could come off easily and the rice was hard and would simply disintegrate the moment one tried to pick it up with chopsticks. Well, cheap prices come with similar quality. After we had finished, we looked over to where the rest of the gang were seated and were embarrassed to see that their plates of sushi were only half of our tower. We came, we conquered and it was time we left. We decided to go and make a round before coming back to meet the gang. There was actually not much to see because most of the things could be easily purchased back here too but Wash and I were eager to spend our Ringgit. Wash had gotten her one hundred ringgit from a generous and thoughtful (he was the one who actually reminded her to get Ringgit) friend while I forced my family members to take out all their leftover Ringgit. We were anxious to spend money that were not ours. We made a few more rounds after being reunited with the gang but still did not manage to get anything. Neko got something from Popular and we waited outside, never realizing that Popular was indeed poular with the locals because the place was entirely packed. Near to desperate to use our Ringgit notes, we finally spent our first dollars at TOPS supermarket. Wash bought cans of Milo and Nescafe while the rest of us filled our baskets with daily supplies of groceries. Taking a speeding cab, we reached Holiday Plaza Shopping Centre in barely ten minutes' time. The Centre was infested with priated VCD shops that had Ah-Bengs looking after them. Most of them even had "Free Delivery To Singapore" signs. I did not have the guts to buy such stuff; fearing that I would be insulted, humiliated, photographed, fined and jailed upon arrival back to Singapore. Inu's mama went to a titbit shop and I browsed around, noticing that "San Shu Gong" products were quite famous but never bought any because I did not really fancy those titbits. More Ah-Bengs tried to lure us into their VCD shops and I had to resist the strong temptation, coming up with silly excuse. "NO! I'm [in]directly [once] associated with the film industry, I can't do something that is against the industry! I will be stoned, mocked at, my concience will be pricked! That Ah-Beng looks so 'yong soui' [cantonese of unlucky face], I can't bring myself to patronize him!" Eh, Inu, can lend me the VCD that you bought after you finish? Our screaming feet told us it was time to stop at around five o'clock and estimating the slow, painful customs queue, we decided that by the time we reached home, it would be just nice for dinner. We made our way to the checkpoint once more and this time, thankfully was faster than coming in. Hot, tired and smelly as I was, but I had to admit that it had been a fun trip. When I reached home, I brought out the souveniors of JB - a pack of Nescafe 3-in-1, a box of Boh Tea and the remaining of the Ringgit which I had previously tried to but failed to spend. PLANTEATER |
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