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Yesterday’s lunch was at Ah Yat seafood restaurant at Hotel Miramar.

Until recently I was always under the impression that the restaurant has closed for the period of the hotel refurbishment since everything is hoarded up. Till last week when the owner’s wife messaged me with their menus. Since then I have been there several times.

I was slated to meet U Zyn and his cousin, Yheu Shen, for lunch yesterday and since the restaurant was giving me a private room, I decided to host lunch there.

A simple but good lunch and the purpose of the lunch was to understand the process of building a house in Malaysia, since Yheu Shen is a Malaysian registered architect. A useful session and I told him it would be better if he saw that site for himself as it will give him a much better idea of what might be possible.

A spontaneous lunch yesterday. I wasn’t even planning to have lunch. I was just walking back from Raffles Place when Harish suggested lunch. When I came back to Marina One, Francis was there as well. A very pleasant surprise to have friends meet and share a meal, especially now when it is getting so much harder to meet.

So we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant at Level 1of Marina One. The food was decent and we chatted for about 2 hours. No topic of any significance with Francis doing most of the talking.

Last night was once again time for our ACS dinner and since it was to be hosted by Peng Tiam and he has just moved into his new house, we had our dinner at his place.

The house is very well thought through and nicely done. He had torn down the houses that were there and built 5 new houses to house his entire family of his brothers and sisters and children and grandchildren. A good way of ensuring a family stays close is by keeping them near and having regular sessions by meeting up and dining together. And he has facilitated that. Good for him.

He catered steak from Rubicon, which was nice. The garlic bread and soup were prepared inhouse, both of which were delicious. For desserts, there were 3 cakes, cherries and durians.

We did a tour of the house before starting dinner. We finished early. Somehow there wasn’t that much conversation last night. Most of it revolved around new furniture, cutlery sets, Trump and Guangzhou.

PS Victor was away and couldn’t make dinner.

I was invited to this lunch time talk at the Ritz Carlton today. This is the first time I have attended such a talk by JB.

I usually don’t find these presentations by banks useful. Most of the time I have found their predictions at the start of the year generally off. But since I was invited by my banker and good friend, I decided to attend this one. The food was surprisingly good.

The way they did the presentation was also quite good. It wasn’t boring. Parts of it were actually interesting. Key takeaways..US interest rates will come down this year and thus the dollar will depreciate, the number one concern of Americans, especially young people, is the issue of affordability and cost of living, there is now a huge impetus to build more housing in the US, Chinese yuan will appreciate and their high tech industries are getting better and becoming global, AI is growing but to look out for Open AI and its burn rate. But I do think that if one follows the news diligently and read the Economist regularly, nothing of what they said was really new or earth shattering.

I was seated with my friend U Zyn. We didn’t get a chance to speak much cos the presentation lasted through the entire lunch.

Also I met a fellow ACS band mate, Mervyn Beng, at the presentation. I remember he was my senior in school and he played the euphonium.

He runs a charity called Resound Collective, which promotes small orchestra and chamber music. I must look out for their performances.

Last night was the performance of this very well known piece by Czech composer Dvorak at the Esplanade by the SSO. This piece was first performed in New York in 1893.

I remember hearing and playing the melody from the 2nd slow movement of this symphony years ago when I was playing in my school band, probably when I was in secondary 2. I loved that melody. It was only much later that I heard all the 4 movements of this symphony. One of the rare symphonies where all the 4 movements are memorable with beautiful and captivating melodies.

The guest conductor was Kolja Blacher and he did a very good job coaxing a very impressive performance out of the orchestra. The tempo was good and the playing excellent. No surprise therefore that he was given a standing ovation.

This has always been one of my favourite classical music pieces and I am glad it turned out to be an evening well spent. I didn’t care much for the 2 pieces they played before the intermission and so the hour long wait to hear this was well worth it.

I do find the audiences here a bit annoying; constant coughing and fidgeting during the performance and clapping in between the movements..sigh.. also some were in t shirts and shorts…

And surprisingly, I met so many people there I know.

I have heard of Hongqi for some time. And I knew they were starting to do ev cars. So I was glad when I found out last year that Eurokars would bring this car to Singapore.

It was launched at the motor show last week. Since I was in KL, I missed it. So they very kindly arranged a viewing of the car this morning.

It was the Chinese left hand drive version and I was told that there would be some differences with the final version coming to Singapore.

The car looked gorgeous and I can’t wait to test drive this. Fingers crossed that the drive is as good as how the car looks!

Now the dilemma. To switch or not to switch.

Once again it was time to celebrate yet another birthday. This time it was Dr Teo’s. He turns 66 and will soon be a grandfather of 3. How time flies.

I first knew him sometime in 2003. He was the Mayor of NWCDC and I had just been appointed as a councillor by him. I didn’t know him at all. Over the years I dare say we have become friends and he entrusted me with many appointments and initiatives, for which I am truly grateful. We have also travelled to Dubai and to Russia, just before Covid struck.

Our dinner last night was at Jia He restaurant at Farrer Hospital. The moment I arrived, the manager, Veronica, started berating me about how I haven’t visited the restaurant in about 2 years! That is true. I used to go there a lot but for some reason, which I now can’t remember, I just stopped.

The food was good and the restaurant made it a point to prepare something special for the birthday. Very nice of them.

I had a belated birthday lunch, courtesy of Kaling, today. We had planned this lunch sometime in December but we couldn’t find a common time to meet. All of us were traveling. We finally had our lunch at Milos, at MBS.

I have never been here but I was impressed. This is a Greek restaurant specializing in seafood. The 3 course set lunch is $68 with a good selection of appetisers and mains.

I had a tomato salad and the fish of the day, both of which were good. The dessert was a Greek yogurt ice cream. Kaling also ordered some prawns, which were excellent. It is therefore no surprise that the restaurant was packed.

We spoke of many things but the 3 that stood out were philandering men, in particular fathers and the impact it has on the children, children who assume and behave as if they are entitled to the wealth of their parents as of right and old people and how vulnerable they are to family members or mistresses who “persuade” them to change their wills.

The first one is a state of affairs not just specific to wealthy families and is one that has existed throughout mankind. I have seen this happen so many times and have always wondered whether humans were ever meant to be monogamous or whether monogamy is a quirk of religious ideas. Increasingly it is not just the men who wander.

The other 2 are clearly rich people’s problems and in Singapore these problems will be become increasingly acute.

We were there for quite a while and it was such a lovely afternoon. Always enjoy such sessions!

I left Kl yesterday morning at 10am. Although I had a full 100% charge, I was still a bit apprehensive. When I was going up to KL, my gauge initially said I wouldn’t have enough charge to reach KL. Strangely this time when I started driving, the gauge showed that I would have 18% left when I reached the Tuas checkpoint.

Anyway a very uneventful drive with no traffic jams at all. Very smooth. A good friend had suggested that I charge my car at the Ayer Hitam ev charging hub.

I tried it. I had 42% charge when I arrived there and in about 15 minutes, I had charged my car to 69%. It is part of a petrol station and so it is just a convenience store and toilets. Pity it is so near Singapore. Would have been better if this was at some mid way point like Ayer Keroh or Pagoh.

Last night was the MPO live performance of the brilliant, multi award winning movie Amadeus.

I remember watching this movie when I was in the University, sometime in 1984 or 1985. I watched it with my then friend at Lido cinema. I loved the movie and the music. Although I knew some of Mozart’s pieces then, it was through this movie that I got to know many of his works, especially the choral works and his operas. Over the years I have bought so many different versions of this movie in so many formats, the video, LD, DVD and finally the itunes version.

But yesterday was special because the music and chorals were live. The performance by the MPO was very good and it was synchronized so well with the movie. I felt the live performance enhanced the movie and I appreciated the movie so much more.

I can only imagine the amount of time the orchestra and the choir would have spent rehearsing for this one night performance. Especially since there are so many different pieces they needed to play. I remember the CD version of this movie was double disc.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and am so glad that I snagged this once in a lifetime opportunity of seeing one of my all time favorite movies live, played by a very good orchestra conducted by their guest conductor, Benjamin Pope.

ps.. after the performance, I was clapping so hard that I lost my Indian Alexandrite ring which was on my pinky finger. Luckily I realised that it had slipped out and after a very anxious minute or so, I found it. Learning lesson.. resize the ring asap.