Sunday, 28 February 2010

MSO Division's Lo-Hei on Feb 26

This is the 1st time the division have a lo-hei. Camy has been surveying which restaurant's yu sheng is good.. there has been several suggestions. Eventually it was arranged at Grand Palace Chinese restaurant at Grand Park Cityhall Hotel. A reminder email was sent out on Feb 25, and requesting all to dress up in traditional costume for the event. It was a sporting affair that majority did dressed up for the lunch, even the non-chinese. Mike had volunteered to be the camera man for the event and he happily offer to take photos for us, early in the morning when the few are in the office. Mike looks good in his brown traditional costume, do does Alan who purposely went Chinatown to get one. Though Chinese would avoid black colour due to auspicious reason, but Alan does look good with the China collar cut. The few of us (ladies of course) took one with the pantry auntie who looks after our floor. Before we left for lunch at 11.50am, we cant helped to take again another photo flashing our different colours of costume. Majority of the employees walk over to Grand Park... the 3 'lazy' ones (Joan, Benny & I) are the only ones taking a bus there. Haha! Well, it was actually Joan who is terribly afraid of the sun, and I am merely accompanying her... and Benny joins us. as we took the bus, we are the no. 1 to arrive at Grand Palace, meeting Mike & Alan at the lobby. They are the 1st group who walked over. The lunch started of with Yu Sheng. We are amazed by the large red bowl of Yu Sheng when the waiter brings into the room. The bowl was with a nice, bright colour... with a subtiantial height! Definitely to match the long chopsticks displayed on the table for the 'lao'! The group was in great spirits as we all raised and did the 'lao yu sheng' together. Mentioning auspicious greetings was a must and we have that 'documented' with video and photos. A 9-course lunch awaits us after the yu sheng. First, the shark fins pumpkin soup... a rather unique combination. We all enjoyed this soup, except for Joan. Well, she tried the 'vegetarian' version and commented it tasted blend... she was not convinced that the soup was not tasty is because of the 'version' she had....nonetheless, we all agreed totally that the soup was delicious. I had the pleasure that I have 2 small bowls of the soup. Hehe! Followed by are wasabi prawn, fish, spring chicken, vegetables, noodles and 2 deserts. I like to specially mention about the deserts. We have 1 cold desert and 1 hot desert. The cold one was interesting as it gave a refreshing taste. It was apricot in sweet syrupp with sago, a combination of sweet and soury taste. This is the first time I try such desert. As for the hot desert, it's 'zing doi' known as sesame ball. I like this desert as the filing is not too sweet (coz it's not red bean filing). The biting sensation is good. The restaurant supervisor came to our table and specially highlighted that the sesame ball goes well after we tasted the apricot. This is the arrangements so that the cold desert will brings out the flavour of the sesame ball-not too sweet and will not provides a 'full' feeling after having it. I totally agree with her. The lunch does end very well with the sesame ball. We all have a hearty meal! Before a walk back to the office, we took our last pic by the restaurant entrance...as the girls cant get over with the beautiful decorations. Haha! Cheeze!!!