National Day celebrations

The National Day long weekend was a welcome break to the school term, especially for Lesley-Anne who had just completed her term tests. Kenneth happened to be away in Hong Kong over the weekend, so it was bonding time for the three of us.

Although I did make Andre fit in some time for work (CA2s coming up afterall), it was generally a weekend of fun and family time. As always, we make any excuse for food! First up was a trip to Botak Jones (our very first) for Sunday lunch to see what all the hype was about.

The food is reasonably priced, portions are generous and we like the sides. Funnily enough, we found that their signature item - the burger - tasted a little flat. The salmon was flaky, moist and came with a scrumptious garlicky sauce. Andre loved the fish burger which was more like fish and chips with a side of bun! We ended with a slice of oreo cheesecake. All in all, worth a repeat visit. We'll probably try their steak the next time and their cheesy baked potato which was sold out when we were there.

For Sunday dinner, we attempted a recipe for cheese-baked rice. The texture turned out really nice, creamy rice with a crusty cheese topping. However, we all felt it could do with more flavour. Might post the recipe for this one if our second attempt works out better.

On Tuesday night, we ordered Pizza Hut delivery. Always a favourite with the kids and there was a National Day special - 45% discount for online orders. Even as I'm writing this post, I'm thinking we've maxed out on our junk food quota. Maybe I should impose a fish soup diet for a while...

Ok, moving away from food and onto activities. We stayed home for the most part (I hate driving so when Kenneth isn't home, we tend to be self quarantined).

We watched movies and assembled a 500-piece jig-saw together. This is an old one we found in the store-room - it's such a hilarious picture entitled "Happy Mother's Day". You can see the mum balancing a whole acrobatic troop while performing household chores. A great imagery on what mums have to juggle!

We also found an old game called Jackpot. Well, that's probably not the actual name, it's just what I call it. I remember playing it with my sister from a very young age, maybe about 5 or 6 and kept it all this time. I think I became such a hoarder because I had so few gifts as a child, I just hung on to everything!

I've never seen the game sold anywhere on the market these days and I don't know if anyone else has played it. You basically try to match the picture on the sides and a jackpot happens when you can match 2 sides of a triangle at one go. The person with the most points wins. It's actually quite fun for such a simple game, the only hassle is having to record the points and add them up. I would love to know if anyone else has ever played this game.

So that was our National Day celebrations - what did you do?

Addendum:

Is it just me or was this year's National Day parade rather uninspiring? Only the backdrop and props were impressive, the rest of it - singing and dancing included - were meh. Lesley-Anne asked whether the organisers had blown the entire budget on the props and left nothing for the costumes cos some of them looked like they were pasted together using tracing paper and embellished with strips of coloured cellophane. Keke.