What else did I do in December?

After looking through my pictures taken in that month, it appears this post might just as well be titled "What else did I eat in December?" I think I should make concerted effort to take pictures of other things I do, because I really do more than eat.

Honestly.

But since the food-skewed pictures have been taken, I might as well share the main highlights.

A couple of months ago, feeling restless and hungry, I took a good-sized detour on my way home from church. "Huge" in the manner of "unnecessarily crossed river even though church and home lie on the same bank". The happy result was my discovery of this Vietnamese restaurant on the business end of Northbridge. It's spacious, charmingly dingy, and serves authentic, subtly flavoured food that doesn't leave me parched. I've returned a few times since, seemingly happier with each successive experience.


















December also being the month of Christmas, there was the work Christmas lunch. The set menu was a forehead-slapping ordeal for indecisive me. Did I want festive (turkey) or favourite (fish)? Unusual (veal)? Or how about going totally veggie? Veal won in the end, tweaking my animal-loving, humane-lifestyle sensitivities in the nose.

And then there was that full Sunday, which doesn't happen often at all these days (I write this thankfully, remembering seasons not so long ago when Sundays were more tightly scheduled, physically depleting, emotionally fraught and spiritually wounding than any other day). I was hungry after church and needed something to tide me over before our late-afternoon date with deep-fried sushi which was to take place before we went to the jazz club, finally, only eight months after we'd first talked about it. This kransky roll filled the gap just right.

You'd have thought I'd made Herr and Frau Hotdog's day when I insisted on having mine the way they would, the way any self-respecting German would. "Onions?" she'd asked, beaming when I nodded. Another nod to sauerkraut, and the beam got wider. But I have never seen a happier sausage-selling pair than these two when I winced at the offer of ketchup and accepted a squirt of mustard instead, not the common-or-garden mustard next to the ketchup but this secret mustard from the small bottle that stood on its own far away from the standard fixings. ("It is very, very hot. Trust me, you don't want too much." She underestimated my Malaysian-raised palate. I will have more of the "very, very hot" mustard next time.)

So, it appears I'm still eating meat. More uncomfortable dialogue between the different parts of me. Yippee.