Mattar Primary School Story Box: Gathering at TCC

3rd August 2013 (3pm):

Below are recent pics from our gathering at TCC cafe at Circular Road, Boat Quay. I decided to create this blog so pictures can be shared with our non-social media friends. One link to a blog and they can see what that has gone on.

Hopefully, they will find time to join in next time. :-)

After TCC, we walked down to South Bridge Road and settled at Hong Hock Eating House - an aircon kopitiam with zhichar and noodle footstalls including an Indian prata one. The weather outside was very warm and I feared Angela might melt and we had to peel her of the streets!

We had a light meal of good fried rice with chilli dishes of stingray, lala, and sh-chi tou (four season beans). The food here is average, and everyone was saving their stomachs for durian afterwards.

However, Ee Ming did not join us for durian and left. Nice of him to walk us to the kopitiam (which is just outside Chinatown opposite Mosque Street and nearest MRT was Chinatown. Really not a bad location to take a breather.)

During dinner, Siew Hong's mom had laksa. It was nice seeing Siam Peng savour her coconut with such gusto. I like coconut flesh also, so can understand her thrill! And I miss those fresh pieces (with brown 'skin' attached) that hawkers used to sell at Bugis market (sei mah lo - Four Carriage Way Road). Coconut pieces on tiered, small aluminum round trays with ice water flowing down.

Funny aside: After 'dinner' with Siew Gek, Lucy and Siam Peng bidding farewell (sad, I had thought they would join in the durian fest!) we wallked to Upper Cross Street for durian as advised by the zhichar lady owner. Turns out, the 24-hr durian uncle was no longer there. But the journey was funny how we detoured into OG's perfume section for some needed aircon cooling. Haha...

On the way back to Chinatown, Angela was tempted to buy durian from a seller by the escalator. I think she got tired of walking. But seeing no proper place to sit, I advised them to press on to the Chinatown market area; I knew there was a good durian seller there. My only reservation was that he would sell us durians at tourist prices. That old uncle at Upper Cross Street was much more reasonable with his prices.

Finally, we reached the durian stall. We were lucky it was not crowded and managed to secure some seats and tables. There was water coming down from some clothes from the flats above, so we moved to another part of the open space.

From the friendly durian seller, we first ordered the yellow Mao Shan Wang. We had about six big durians, They were yummilicious. But the better ones were come afterwards, what the uncle called Tai Yuan, white durian that's a little bitter, a little sweet but altogether with chunky flesh and very small seeds. They reminded me of very good durians during my childhood when yellow flesh ones were not as common. The seeds were amazingly kua-chi small!

Man, the seeds were really tiny or non-existent!

We had 7-8 durians but Thin Leong ordered two more for Lin Hiong, who gamely joined us late.

In the end, we were so stuffed no one wanted to touch the last two durians!

All in all, a wonderful tea and durian outing the whole day! (From 3pm onwards). Most got to meet Bee Har, Siam Peng, Wee Hock, Mui Chow, Ee Ming for the first time. That's the thing with these gatherings: Some regular faces, a few new faces. But at least all got to be re-acquainted again after all these years! So, it means a lot for busy folks to drop in no matter what. :-)

See short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IIYe52W63Q