Bro Larry's Bash

Zen and Red Box
Weds, Dec 19, 2007

What a hectic day. The pre-holiday jams and festive happenings kept some of us from reaching the Zen Restaurant at Sunway Pyramid on time. However, attendance was good, with Bee Li making another heroic effort to come in from Nilai. Not there were Poh Sing, who was outstation; Mun Fai, who was sick (again?) and Siew Lee who had visitors from out-of-town.

So there we were, having another great-grub-and-yummy-yarns session with the guys, as usual, giving us lots to chew upon and digest. Which, as you people will see in the photos, included a magic show from Rick. As to why and what he was doing with the serviette, suffice to say it has to do (doesn't it always?) with girth and measurements - err, the long and short - of the male anatomy, vis-a-vis the belly and the birdie. Strictly, it was a comparison between his and Sensei's. Before we go further into such an intimate subject, the political climate of today makes it expedient for us not to delve too deeply into areas we shouldn't poke into. Best let it be between the two gentlemen to explore in private. So long as it is not in a certain hotel which has certain advanced recording facilities in a certain town in Johor.

Discussion also touched on medications. Seems a HP pill that Sensei takes gives him (or his little brother, no pun intended, honestly, cos except for Rick, how would I know?) a morning uplifting. As to whether this is good or bad, we girls didn't pursue. We're not the scandal-hungry press mah. But there you go, conversations are more and more centred around health issues. Expect more to come as we age, err, gracefully.

Amidst the wolfing down of sushi, octopi, edamame and unpronounceable Japanese delights, once again, the subject of bro Larry being the subject of fascination of a certain female dawg was touched upon. Again denials were issued but "how can lah, each time she calls only him and has long conversations with only him" was on the minds of everyone.

As for the food, well, for Mike and the recuperating doc down under, we append titillating images. Dinner over, we scampered next door for our karaoke session. Your reporter took video footage (hmm, training which will come in handy in case I need a second career; but first, lots of practice is necessary as you guys will no doubt see if and when I get to download it into CDs) but so sorry, I don't have the software to upload it and email it to you all. If I put it on YouTube, I might get sued for gross invasion of privacy by certain individuals.

The singing was raucous, as usual. With Bee Li as a first-timer for our yodelling sessions, things got a bit livelier and Rick had to give chance. Actually, his excuse was the key was not right for him. But that didn't stop him from giving us an entertaining Hokkien number called Ti O O (sky black black?). No complaints about the mike from Yoke Chen even though she didn't bring her own. Sensei gave us his signature tune of I saw her standing there again, ably backed by our birthday boy, SV and Chew Hong. I don't know if it was the jugs or sashimi that did it but inhibitions were somehow gone by the time the morning crept in and we had the birthday boy doing some rocking with Rick (to the music lah).

Yoke Chen's birthday cake for Larry was a sugarless chocolate chiffon cake. The birthday boy in his excitement and temporarily weakened state (overwhelmed no doubt by all the fawning and the palpable caring from those present) found it difficult to cut the cake with the plastic knife, which snapped. The discovery that a sugarless cake (brought with such caring concern for the health of our brothers whose conditions are now the subject of every meeting) could be such a hard thing to cut didn't dampen our birthday song, though, which we sang with great gusto in English and cantonese. Enough to bring the house down and not bad for the "oldest" patrons there that night. (Don't pretend lah, brothers, those frequent trips to the loo and the song selections betrayed us even if our appearance didn't.)

The only thing missing was our wine, which couldn't be drunk, because the Red Box people wanted to charge us RM70 corkage for each bottle. How absurd. We're keeping them for the next do of course.

Sir Gallant (aka Larry) again escorted Flo and Connie to their cars, somewhere in the great labyrinthes of the enlarged complex. SV, who was late, had just abandoned his car near the complex entrance and was leaving it to chance that it wouldn't be towed away. I hope you found your car intact, brother.

It was another long session and poor Connie's many earlier attempts to leave had always been thwarted. Like me, I guess she took some time to recover from the sleep deficit. Anyway, what she and I didn't tell you people was that the day had earlier given both of us a bit of shaking up. I heard that my lawyer had serious colon cancer and she heard that her sis-in-law had lymphoma. So both of us had this disturbing news tucked in the back of our minds even while we were having a good time. By Saturday, she called me to say her SIL had passed away.

Things couldn't get more dramatic when Sensei, ever the gentleman, sent Bee Li home and she entertained him with her personal story of being disturbed by spirits and such. Of course, you all know by now, how he kept checking his rear mirror on the way home, at 3am.