voting with our wallet

and the vote goes to... <drum roll>... genki japanese restaurant!

the lady says to us, tell me if i'm mistaken. did we not have you just a couple nights ago?

you're not mistaken, we tell her. we love you.

anyway, the junket ends tomorrow and then it's back to the grindstone.

sin hup kee (one more for the books)

behold the cockles! behold the lard croutons! the fried kway teow here is arguably our gold standard for the stuff. (their other stuff is good too)

zus coffee

if you ask me, zus is the luckin of malaysia.

same unpretentious cool-ish vibe same straightforward decent coffee same simple snacks (HOM likes their curry puff) and almost the same mid-level price point.

ming yue confectionary

yes, the peanut candy is all it is hyped to be.

no, even the peanut candy is not worth braving the 4-shophouse-deep line and 3 hired armed guards.

we go for coffee instead.

sunday service

hymns to my heart's content. including the gloria patri, whose awkward strains and beloved lyrics surface from long-term storage. jianti zi and fanti zi interchangeably and unself-consciously alternate on the slides alongside painfully incompetent english. it is a time capsule of a church service and quite attractively vintage.

unfortunately the sermon is anodyne and just a little bit theologically wonky*. 'nuff said.

*on the meaning of suffering except it fails to talk about self-inflicted suffering before waxing on God-permitted suffering and we all know the self-inflicted bit can be fearsome too.

little horsie

you know those doting grandmothers who cannot walk past a store without buying something for their grandchild? a new shirt a toy or simply any indulgence?

i have become one of them. yikes. (meet ursula the little horsie)

adventure

unfortunately the ambrosial river shrimp are indeed most inaccessible. HOM and i spend a fruitless hour trying to get a cab before we give up and try to get coffee instead. i walk up to the random lady in the next random coffee shop and ask if she can help me get a cab and she turns to the random old man sitting drinking his coffee and says, hey, do you want some business? and it turns out the man (all of 77 years old but with a strong voice and decided opinions yet) runs a part-time side gig as a driver.

if this is not answer to prayer i don't know what is. thanks be to God.