We started the evening/night’s adventure with Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N’ Roses from Karu’s mixtape playing on the radio in Bellyn’s silver Viva.
Reservations were made beforehand at Upstairs Café, which was fortunate because when we reached the café which was literally an upstairs shoplot, it was pretty much full. We each placed our own food orders (all of us ordered pasta of different varieties) (I ordered putanesca despite not knowing what it was solely because there was a period of time in my life when I was obsessed with the Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events movie and one of the scenes in it was when the Boudelaires had to prepare putanesca as dinner for Count Olaf using a spittoon) and also dessert orders.
And then, we waited until around half past seven for iftar. In the meantime, we played Truth or Dare using an app of Bellyn’s phone as the “spinning bottle”. The last time I played Truth or Dare was when I was 12, but that was the least of the reasons why I was apprehensive to play this game. But in the end, I didn’t go a single round and it actually turned out to be quite an entertaining activity while we waited for our food to arrive.
Not surprisingly, all thoughts of Truth or Dare went out the metaphoric window when our pastas arrived, and in between gulping down our food wolfishly, exclaims of how splendid the food was were thrown around the table, which were met by equally enthusiastic nods and agreements by members of the dinner table. And then the desserts arrived – crème brulee, lemon meringue – and it was so, so good so Harris and I went to order our own desserts as well – lemon meringue too, and a chocolate French dessert. We also secretly ordered a slice of red velvet cake for Zitian, as this food trip was initiated partially to celebrate Zitian’s belated birthday.
Dessert eating was yet another round of happy and satisfied customers showing their affection for the food and now, the place and its ambience in general. And then Zitian’s cake came and we all collectively sang a birthday song for her.
It’s getting harder and harder to describe my experiences with these people using mere words. They really don’t do my emotions justice at all.
We continued talking after that and left when it started to get quite crowded. From there, Bellyn drove us to SS15 where we shopped for bread and pastries at RT Bakery. We didn’t say it out loud, but it felt as if none of us wanted the night to end just yet. Being mobile felt powerful. But it was a Monday night, which meant that there were still classes to attend tomorrow, homework to be done, responsibilities to be fulfilled. There will come a day when none of this will matter anymore, none of this will be top priority on our lists, but alas, Monday night was not that day.
At around 9PM, it was time to head back. Taliza was dropped off at college, and Karu and Harris were dropped off at Pyramid. And then Bellyn, Zitian and I headed back to SMR.
We ended the evening/night’s adventure once again with Sweet Child of Mine.
michelle teoh 