K and I both love having people around and so a few weeks ago we invited about 13 other friends to join us for a pre summer garden party. I didn't think we planned for that many people but over here, someone will be a friend of a friend who also knows our other friend so it gets complicated to exclude and therefore safer to invite everyone. We had hoped for good weather and was disappointed to see the weather forecast for a rainy Saturday. We ordered food from the supermarket to be delivered on Friday night and friends were kind to ask us what they could bring as well. I was a bit nervous as seldom do we have that many guests and I wasn't sure how much food would 15 people consume?
On Saturday morning it was cloudy but temperature wise was not too bad. We could stand in the garden without feeling the chill. In fact hubby K decided to mow the lawn in his shorts! By 11am we soon starting pottering about in the kitchen, cooking stuff in the oven and I was doing last minute clean up of the living room and hallway before changing into something presentable.
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| Hung a sign for people to come through the garden gate |
Soon by 130pm friends started arriving and the sun actually came out for a bit which was quite nice. Brenda whom we met for the first time brought over a pot of chicken curry and two baguettes, bless her. She woke up at 6am to start cooking! Super guest!
Here are some pictures to share.
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| Me showing I-Ding the garden as she was the first ones to arrive |
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| Setting the table |
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| See the two plastic pots? One held my claypot chicken rice, and the other, chicken curry - both of which were well received |
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| Waiting for the rest to arrive |
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| K and his oven cooked food here - roasted parsnips, chicken wings, tempura prawns, duck spring rolls |
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| Can't miss having some bunting in a garden party |
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| With our Malaysian cum Hillsong friends |
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| Dishing out the rice and pouring curry sauce over it |
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| The hosts :) |
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| I got the guests to write their names on their paper cups so there wasn't any confusion! |
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K managed to get everyone's attention on something in the ground?
He was doing a mini garden tour hah! Very proud of his freshly mowed lawn btw ;) |
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| Garden tour - showing them how powerful the weeds are |
It soon started drizzling and we all adjourned indoors. There we had the surprise dessert - soya beancurd! Courtesy of Rachel, The Kims and Chang Yate. It's very rare to find this in London, plus this is probably the best soya beancurd in London so it was a pleasant surprise indeed for everyone. Though we were all bursting already, as they say, there is always a separate stomach for dessert. I liked how diverse the group was that Saturday afternoon. Sure, most are in banking/ finance, but we also had a lawyer, an eye specialist and now a friend who is an oncologist (he's here on training for one year), and another friend who works at the Singapore High Commission; she's part of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) which is interesting cos I had questions for her like, "Do you often see our PM?? How is he like?" I remembered a uni friend who was at the PMO interning years ago and she said everyone asks her this SAME question but she said she sees him the same time as we all see him - i.e. on TV!! haha So yes naturally this is the same answer I got that afternoon. Seems like our PM is pretty elusive?! And when our Taiwanese friend I-Ding ("Yi-ding") found out RX is an eye specialist, she immediately asked "Oh! Can I ask you about my eye? See recently I've been feeling..." haha it's quite funny. I do that to RX too if I feel something weird going on with my eyes. Or in fact anything related to our body since she went to medicine school. And I-Ding herself is doing something really interesting. She left her high flying job in one of the top investment banks to do a start up now - she's devoting all her time now developing an app! She was quite glad to whip out her phone that afternoon showing everyone her beta version and getting us to her mailing list as she attempts to build her database. And we had Rachel in the construction industry - her company does projects for ultra rich people in London so her workplace is always in beautiful, massive houses in the posh part of London. As you already know, we are in search of a new front door so I asked her all about front doors that afternoon ;) but naturally she is more familiar with security front doors (remember I wrote about thick steel reinforced doors which opens like a safe with huge bolts shooting out two weeks ago?). She was telling us that they had installed bullet proof windows for umm.. rich Russian oligarchs before.
Everyone chatted and sat around until 7pm before someone suddenly asked "What's our dinner plans?"
I was planning in my mind a simple dinner like plain porridge with marmite (my comfort food as weird as it sounds) but it seemed like most of us south east Londoners were keen to drive out to this Chinese restaurant not too far away to have dinner. So yes, off we went in two cars. We did keep in mind to order just enough cos seriously we had ate non stop since 2pm.
PS. Special shoutout to my cutie pie niece Sarah - we had a FaceTime session and she called me "gu-gu" for the first time today! *heart melting*
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