Cynthia’s Birthday

When it comes to other people’s birthday celebration (actually including mine), I am usually the non-creative-go-with-the-flow type. Since there is a limit as in how much I can blog about other people’s lives, let’s skip what happened this morning and afternoon and go straight to dinner.

Each year I let Cynthia choose where to dine. Some years we ended up at high end restaurants. Some years we ended up having candle light dinner at home. One year I forgot what we had for dinner but I do remember on that day, we drove back to Singapore from our Malacca trip and in the evening we had a birthday cake with candles. Got that recorded in our camcorder. This year, Cynthia wanted to dine at Hard Rock Cafe and I think it has been years since we have visited that place. The last time we were there was with our guitarist Jason during the Metallica’s launch of the St. Anger album. The Thai-Chinese MTV VJ Utt was there at the bar and Cynthia had one drink served by Utt himself! Always brings back good memories – especially for the two hard rockers in us. Talking about hard rockers, while I was inside Hard Rock Cafe, an idea came to my mind. How about a Hip-Hop Cafe that has a hip-hop theme to it instead. Could be interesting.

Took the non-highway route into the city, I filter in and out of the lanes frequently in order to blend in with the rush hours driving sentiment that is so commonly manifested on the road at those hours. Then at the Novena junction, I stopped abruptly when the turn right green arrow disappeared. The taxi next to me went through though. Tsk tsk tsk … some kind of drivers we have in Singapore. While waiting at the junction watching the vehicles shot pass my face I saw this big flash light beamed into my eyes. Oh yes, a van just went through the red light camera and the camera flashed. Poor van driver and tsk tsk tsk … some kind of drivers we have in Singapore.

Right after the right turn I saw a red light. So I slowed down and stopped. Some pedestrians must have pressed the button and crossed when there was no car. The moment I stopped at the line after a rather long slowing down distance, a taxi zoomed pass me totally oblivious that there was a red light in front. Shocking really. Tsk tsk tsk …

Law abiding citizens like myself of course took ages to reach Hard Rock Cafe. The Linkin Park album that Cynthia has chosen for the road nearly reached the end as I parked at the Forum. Whenever I dine at Hard Rock Cafe, regardless of locations be it as Chicago, Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Bali (hey, is there a Hard Rock Cafe in Hong Kong?!), or anywhere I cannot remember at this very moment, I always order the beef and chicken fajitas. Now, the menu comes with seafood fajitas and I recommended that to Cynthia. She appeared to love it. It has … let me recall … fish, squid, scallops, mussels, and prawns inside.

Cynthia will continue the celebration with her friends and colleagues in the following days (lucky girl!). That, I am sure, is beyond my blog.