Gong Xi Fa Cai

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! I went to a big steamboat dinner at the West Oxford community centre hosted by the Asia-Pacific Society, Hong Kong Society, and Malaysia/Singapore Student Association, and brought along Rich and Mindy. Dinner was fun, and it was terrific seeing all the other Singaporeans.

The highlight of the evening was the raffle. I had bought no less than fifteen of the eighty-ought tickets sold (the last fifteen, numbers 152-166), and so I was statistically confident and winning something. Yet as time passed and the prizes were awarded, I had nothing. With two prizes to go, I was telling myself that the law of averages was working in my favour. I closed my eyes, crossed my fingers, and waited as they pulled the number of the second prize out of the bag...

...and at the first sound of "160" I leaped and screamed "YES!!!!" before running for the front of the room. I gleefully received my prize of champagne and truffles and returned to find Rich laughing at my overly emotional reaction. I suppose it's the athlete in me- when I get into something, I put my entire fibre of being into it.

The best was yet to come, however. The grand prize was a fifty pound voucher for dinner at the Mandarin Oriental, a five-star hotel in London. "95" came out of the bag and my first thought was, "95? Wait, that's-"

and I spun around to look at Mindy, who had a priceless expression on her face and was gasping for air and making little unintelligible noises.

As she went up to collect her prize, Rich and I looked at each other, and we had the same thought on our minds:

"Could we feed three people on fifty pounds?"

"I'm sure it's sufficient," I opined.

"Well," he reasoned, "Mindy's a slight girl... she could eat maybe ten pounds worth... so that leaves twenty pounds for two other people..."

Yes, we are two selfish gits. But we love Mindy, we do!