yin yang hotpot @
furama city centre





last night, my friend chan jim kee had a big bang at furama city centre. he had steamboat dinner for about fifty of his friends, colleagues and relatives to celebrate his fifty-fifth birthday. at age 55, you can withdraw part of your money in the cpf (central provident fund).

normally, he would celebrate with a home dinner at his place in sembawang. however, for the past two years, he had been hosting it at the seletar base golf club. at seletar, we were treated to buffet style dinner.

the steamboat at furama dinner features a yin-yang style wok. this means that you can savour two kinds of soup bases at the same time. on one side is the mild, milky soup while the other side is the spicy, mala soup.

what was special was the ingredients for the steamboat. we started with lobster and geoduck clam. it was the first time i was eating this clam. you could have it in two ways: raw or dipped in the hotpot soup. most of us chose to eat it the shasimi style, dipped in wasabi sauce. likewise, for the lobster. (the geoduck is the obscene looking thing on top right)

we had fried salmon skin, tau kee, shui kau, yam, raw salmon, canadian oyster and turkey. for desert, there was ang koo kueh, kueh salat and orh nee.

among the guests were his ccab colleagues mc wong, lam, ismail and hshieh; members of his outdoor education team; victoria school colleagues like harry, elango, kiat chong and santokh singh; his rangoon road secondary school classmates; and friends like myself, harry tan (of nie) and virabhak.