A Night of Million Smiles

"Night of a Million Smiles"... that's the theme for my new company's annual dinner. I don't have any idea how the committee members came up with that theme... there were only about 800 people who attended the dinner... so where's the million smiles? :P

Anyway, as usual, I was one of the earliest people who arrived at Equatorial Hotel where the event was held. It was held at an unseemly day and unseemly time. Have you ever heard of annual dinners on Thursday that started at 5.15pm? I supposed they will get a cheaper rate if it's held on weekdays kua :P. Well, I have no complaints since we are all allowed to leave the company at 4pm. Since I'm staying very near to both the company and Equatorial Hotel, I managed to take a refreshing bath and change my clothes before going there... and yet, I'm still too early.

When it was mentioned that the event starts at 5.15pm, I knew that it meant 6.15pm Malaysian time. However, no matter how hard I tried, the idea of being late just made me uncomfortable. Thus, in the end, I still reached there before 5.15pm. I was hoping that at least I would have some company since the Witch and Doryfish and gang said that they are leaving the company and will go straight to the hotel at 4.45pm. Well, I guess I should have known better than to trust that :P. In the end, I had to sit alone in a table, fending off other colleagues, reserving the seats for my other gang members :P. I would like say, "I'm sorry, but the seats are filled" and my colleagues would look around and see nine empty chairs around the table... it was so embarrassing!

The empty table that I had to sit alone for 30 minutes!!!

Well, I supposed it was worth the wait. As Doryfish pointed out, they were late because they were making themselves 'presentable' so that they can be on my level (well, she didn't exactly said that, but that's what I heard :P). Here are their pics... presentable?... well, acceptable lor...

Doryfish and the Witch...

Swee Lin, Doryfish and the Witch... all are my lunch buddies!!!

While we were still waiting for the VVVIPs to arrive, Doryfish asked me to take a picture for her. Can you guess what it is?

Yup, it's the lights from the hotel... can it be categorized as chandelier? The clarity of the picture taken by my super camera never cease to amaze me :P

I guessed I should not have bragged too much about my camera because sick of hearing me preaching about my camera, Doryfish and the Witch formed an anti-Bamboo camera group and attempted to find the flaws in my camera... which they succeeded :(

Well, not exactly... they pointed out that the pictures taken by my camera are quite blurry as shown in my previous posts. Well, this is because I did not use flash for almost all of my photos and I doubt that there exist a point and shoot camera that can take clear pictures in dim places without flash. Below are two pictures taken in succession... one without flash and one with flash.

Group picture with flash...

Group picture without flash...

Sure, the picture did look clearer with flash, but the one without flash looks more natural. Besides, flashing your camera is something I find quite annoying... that and on top of those 'infrared' face scanner that most cameras have nowadays.

Well, enough blabbering... after some of the normal ritual speech, the first dish of the day is finally served! First, is the Equatorial Hot and Cold Combination Platter... I supposed that means the dish has cold and hot food kua... and it was quite a bad start. While it was a feast for the eyes, it doesn't have any tasty food. There is even one Thai style dish which contains cucumbers and stuff which doesn't taste Thai style at all!

Equatorial Hot and Cold Combination Platter

Well, I can't say I'm surprised but since there are eight dishes, surely at least some of them are nice... so I was anticipating eagerly for the second dish which sounds really nice... Hot and Sour Si Chuan Soup. Normally people use Shark Fin's but I supposed it's for cutting cost and being environment friendly? Frankly, I don't mind but again, the 'Hot and Sour' Si Chuan Soup is a big disappointment. I can see that it's Si Chuan style since the soup is laden with bean curd but it's not hot nor sour at all! Also, I tasted some really weird taste in the soup... yucks... two down, six to go.

Hot and Sour Si Chuan Soup

The next dish is Lemon Chicken with Lemon Saffron Sauce... well, the name sounds elegant, but in fact it's just those Lemon Chicken found in almost every Chinese restaurant. Anyway, you really have to be an idiot to spoil this dish... and it turned out that they are not... barely. The Lemon Chicken was barely acceptable... and this is coming from a meat lover. The chicken are okay but the sauce was... I don't know how to describe it except for using the word 'strange' :P. Anyway, they also put a Chinese herb with the dish "gei zhi"... which totally threw me off balance... that herb is basically useless since the lemon sauce covered the taste of the herb... I supposed they are using us as experiments?

Lemon Chicken with Saffron Lemon Sauce

I look over to the Witch sitting beside me and saw her taking out the chicken skin! Well, I supposed it's a normal thing nowadays, with people being so-called 'health-conscious' and all. What a waste... :P

Wasteful Witch... :P

Next, two dishes came at once... maybe people are complaining at the crawling pace of the food and are threatening to turn cannibal if the speed of the food servings are not increased? Anyway, the next two dishes are Whole Snapper Ikan Goreng on Sambal Chilli and Deep Fried Prawn with Butter and Egg Yolk. Really, can't they come up with a nicer name for the fish? Anyway, thankfully, these two dishes are nice enough for me to have three servings :P. The prawns are nicely fried and was very aromatic. The fish... well, the fish was quite difficult to eat since it was sort of held together by the flour and we had a hard time tearing the fish into pieces before taking it to our plates, but the sambal was good. Well, now we had five dishes in which two are good and one is acceptable... it's a tie!

Whole Snapper Ikan Goreng on Sambal Chilli and Deep Fried Prawn with Butter and Egg Yolk

As a part of the entertainment, we had some singers on stage singing Malay, English and Chinese songs. Also, we had a competition which the winner is the one with the best smile... sadly, I forgot to take a photo of the winner. However, I did take the picture for the next competition. It was the Best Style competition. They identified two males and two females who has the best style and ask us choose the winner. Frankly, like those idol competitions, it's more of a popularity contest than being really stylish. The more well-known you are, the more people will vote for you.

The finalists of the Best Style contest... if this is the best style out of 800 people, you now know why I did not take pictures of other people in the dinner :P

Next, again, two dishes were served in the same time. They are Yong Chow Fried Rice and Sayur Campur Malaysia. The fried rice is acceptable, but I suspect mostly because I was still hungry... but it definitely wasn't Yong Chow Fried Rice. As for the Sayur Campur Malaysia, as you can deduced from the name they used, it's just terrible... but we must eat our greens, don't we?

Yong Chow Fried Rice

Sayur Campur Malaysia

Finally, came the dessert... which the emcee claimed is the best dish for the night. It came and I was amazed. It looks really nice... and each of us has our own personal cup of dessert! The dessert is Mango Pudding with Sago Cream. I took a bite and the night of disappointment is finally complete. I won't say it's terrible, but it is just tasteless. I supposed it might have been due to the chocolate wafer stick I ate before digging into the mango pudding, but I doubt that. In fact, the mangoes littered on the plate tasted much, much nicer than the mango pudding in the cup... and the coconut flakes on top were just too sweet... and that is from someone with a sweet tooth!

Mango Pudding with Sago Cream

In all, it was not a really nice dinner. But then again, I have never had any nice dinner in hotels. I don't know why they can make such nice buffet lunch and dinner but totally flopped in course dinner. Anyway, as I have always said, it is the company that is the most important... although since we are sitting really near to the sound system, we can barely talk at all. Next time, they really should have buffet dinner instead. But then again, you'll have 800 people milling around the grand hall... and that would be a sight to behold! :P