I retired for a few hours and then rejoined everyone (except
I think dedehans) at Lau Pa Sat. Or more accurately, I
showed up at midnight to find nobody, nada, zilcho. Wandered
around clockwise for a half hour (the pavilion is round of
course) and then saw Blank Sheet and a couple others;
gradually people coalesced, and dinner commenced:

satays - the guy who had collared us worked for the satay
stall at number 3 and 4 or something, and I don't care for
their satay, so I had none of this;

lots of beer - goes without saying. I bought the first three
pitchers (a couple folks chipped in later) and figured that
everyone was on his own;

the other end of the table had a whole bunch of things; I
didn't see any of what was going on.

At length infoworks and Lori_Q arrived to round out the
party. I was especially glad as Lori_Q was my virtual
roommate for the past night and infoworks my real roommate
for the succeeding nights. It was good to connect with
both of them.

Our end of the table had just some crispy squid (Blank
Sheet's choice I think) and chicken wings (infowork's
suggestion), so we got off fairly easy. Lori wanted
noodles, so someone ordered Hokkien mee (wheat and rice
noodles mixed, shrimp buried in the mess) for her - what
came was rather sloppy and distinctly below average, though
still quite edible. infoworks and I reflected on how much
better the food was elsewhere. I reminded him that this was
1 or 2 in the morning, and what can one expect?

infoworks had kindly offered to put a rollaway into his
suite to accommodate me (how else could I afford to buy
all those beers, eh?), and we toddled off to the Inter-
Continental, where we were greeted with an excellent
Shophouse suite overlooking the busy marketplace at Bugis
Junction. With two double beds plus a rollaway. I ended
up with my own double bed, which with its feather duvet
and two gigantic pillows quite luxurious indeed. The only
downside to this was the news from infoworks that I snore,
something that generations of young ladies have never had
the indelicacy to complain about.

Be that as it may, after an excellent night's sleep we went
to Banana Leaf Apolo, meeting Lori_Q, bschaff1, and rtarbuck
for an even more excellent lunch. The schtick of this place
is that you get a banana leaf, upon which they pile rice,
cabbage curry, and some weird red mixed vegetable and dal
thing (I forget exactly what, as I don't eat much of it,
the cabbage curry being so good); then you get your dishes
of real food to add to the mixture. Our real food:

infoworks insisted on the yellow dal, despite my pointing
out that we got some dalish thing anyway; he was right, as
these are some of the best beans I've ever had.

Chicken masala was I don't know whose suggestion, but it
was excellent.

My suggestion was mutton masala, but as someone had already
ordered the above, I compromised with mysore mutton, which
is a spicy rather coarse dish of which I am quite fond. It
was as expected; I think some of us may have found it a bit
too too, but that meant all the more for me.

It is said that fish tikka was ordered, but I don't recall
seeing it. We also had a double order of the excellent
naan bread that they make here.

I had a big young coconut instead of beer, bearing in mind
the potential foie grassiness of my liver and the fact that
we were to run off to Southbank Thai for beer later in the
afternoon. Which we did. Lots of Tiger beer with bseller,
WWBGD, and Alexa. Later on various FlyerTalkers joined us,
and we had a good party. Hi, Blank Sheet!

At length it was time to get our taxi to the main event at
No Signboard (we thought it would be a waste of time, and at
that point we thought time was of the essence, to go to the
Meridien and transfer to the bus that seanthepilot had so
kindly booked). We actually got there early, got our table
set up, and went to town.

Our table: karenkay, dedehans, Mad4Miles, gvdIAD,
Lori_Q, szg, alex, infoworks, myself. I think. also zvezda
and seanthepilot were part-timers. And maybe bschaff1.

The ordering was done largely by infoworks, who is a take-
charge sort of guy, and karenkay, who actually knows a lot
of Mandarin - more than I do, anyhow.

We ended with:

salt and spice pork, quite excellent, what I know as "pepper
and salty style," texture better than usual

fried chicken wings, quite nice

bok choy - the usual, very crisp, very good

butter prawns - the usual; bseller and I have this perennial
discussion of which is better, the butter prawns or his
favorite cereal prawns. The main differences are the butter
ones are skewered straight and coated with some kind of
cereal, whereas the cereal prawns are allowed to curl
naturally and are coated with some other kind of cereal
which is sweeter and with a vanilla note.

chili crab (2) - very good this time, not too sweet

black pepper crab (2) - very good this time, not too harsh.

We also had the dessert soup, which seanthepilot insisted
on and which comes free for the asking.

I also sneaked the head of a cereal prawn from the adjacent
table to see if it was any different from before - it was
just as expected.

Lots of Tiger beer. S$40 each. The table(s) that got the
lobster salad paid maybe $10 more.

The oldsters at the IC - Lori, infoworks, and myself,
pooped out of the drinking party at Boat Quay and went home
to bed. At some point infoworks fielded a call from Alex
I think about raiding minibars. He said to come on down
but promptly fell back asleep.

I spent much of the night fiddling with my tooth, worrying
it loose with the aid of minibar Chivas; eventually, at
around 6 in the morning, it came out, no blood, no pain.