A Dinner

Dinner at Yunsong's last night, with Olivia and Karweng. And of course, Yunsong.

If I ever need a moment to confirm the realisation that writing never perfectly captures a thought or feeling, this would be it.

Everything began on Wednesday or Thursday, 23rd or 24th of April 2008 in a white envelop I couldn't recognise, bearing the words "Ms Charmaine Han" and my address. I wondered so hard what it could be I didn't even wait till my standard post-dinner treatment of mail. It was a black card, handmade, bearing Yunsong's unfamiliar but known elaborate signature. An invitation to (a homecooked!)dinner! I couldn't stop smiling for the rest of the week. In all honesty, if everything had stopped with that card, I'd still be over the moon.

I thought the day would never come since the invitation bore no date I could count down to or mark on my dandy new calendar in bright colours. But it did come - last night. Yunsong, Karweng, Olivia and I had a lovely dinner of Asian Style Shrimp Soup (we still don't know which part of Asia), Coq de Vin (the french way of chicken romantically marinated with red wine), asparagus wrapped in raw ham (the fine dining way), carrots sweated in orange juice and herb, and home made custard (which tasted like chawanmushui that soon gave way to vanilla. We are no chefs, obviously). I hate cooking, ordinarily, but I think I would cook everday - okay, every month - if the three of them were around. I would have never imagined friendship could lead to a dimly lit dining room washed out with our favourite songs, over a lavish dinner.

Cooking is love. I am now convinced that I'd have to be thoroughly, ridiculously, compulsively and hopelessly in love to slave in the kitchen to touch the insides of smoeone else (or helplessly indebted). Even knowing the wonderfully romanticised person Yunsong is, the dinner - its planning, finery and effort - took my breath away. His handwritten cooking notes were planned in quantities for two, but I wouldn't have guessed he how he originally wanted it with the enthusiasm displayed at the suggestion of turning it into a gathering. But I think it was just lovely the way it happened. If it had been any more intimate, I think I might have taken him in the kitchen and ruined us forever. Men who cook romantically are not to be resisted.

For the sheer effort that went into that single dinner, I think my heart moved a little. (I think I'm still in awe of Yunsong's parents too, who took everything in their stride and played amazing hosts to the point where I felt really bad.) I wish I had better ways of describing how immensely nice it was to be laughing among Karweng and Olivia, chopping stuff, making messes and injuring each other.

I have given up. I have stopped seeing things as beginnings or ends in Life's plot. Only moments. Beautiful moments.