Monday, March 15, 2010

Savoured Moments


The past few weeks have been peppered with meet-ups and gatherings with many friends who'd flown in from overseas, to spend their Christmas and Chinese New Year holidays back home in Singapore. In the typical Asian fashion, we'd get together over various meals, attempting to catch up with one anothers' lives, while trying to satisfy a multitude of cravings for the foods that they had missed.

However, now that the holidays are over, most of them have returned to continue their studies or work in different countries, and it'll be almost a year before I get to see them again. I'm already beginning to miss many of them, and know I'll probably be suffering from mild post-overseas-friends-withdrawal symptoms soon :)

Therefore, an old friend and I spent our evening at the 2am: Dessertbar at Holland V today, making the most of our time left together, before she had to make her way back to Australia too. The place was filled with a peaceful and relaxed atmosphere, while the desserts were extremely rich and decadent. Despite their relatively small size, the chocolate desserts oozed a thick molten chocolate filling with each bite, while the sorbets were refreshingly light, and balanced the richness of the chocolate. Furthermore, the desserts weren't cloyingly sweet, and both of us agreed that these were some of the best chocolate dishes among any of the cafes we've visited so far. We enjoyed the ambience too, and sat there chatting for most of the evening. And it was a "fine dining" experience indeed (i.e. dainty food portions, large plates, and huge prices ;)
However, when it came to the company and conversation that we shared there, those... were priceless... :)



"We savoured our moments together, and we would gather in out-of-the way places, ostensibly to talk at great length about inconsequential matters, but in fact to cement faces, the sounds of voices, and very personal connections forever in our memories."
- The Hidden City, by David Eddings.


2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

reading this reminded me of what the changes i had to deal with when i moved back to kl, and i suppose, a part of me still reminisce and miss adl constantly.

i hope you have a smooth transition back to life in singapore. i'm hoping to come by to visit in the next two months or so, then maybe you can show me this dessert place too. :)

8:49 AM  
Blogger Woei Shyang said...

It's really those moments of bliss that we experience in this life, that really provides a foreshadowing of what creation was originally intended to be :)

Just thought to share this little quip from the book "The Prodigal God" that I have been enjoying a lot lately:

"... the Bible says that we have been wandering as spiritual exiles ever since. That is, we have been living in a world that no longer fits our deepest longings. Though we long for bodies that “run and are not weary,” we have become subject to disease, aging, and death. Though we need love that lasts, all our relationships are subject to the inevitable entropy of time, and they crumble in our hands. Even people who stay true to us die and leave us, or we die and leave them. Though we long to make a difference in the world through our work, we experience endless frustration. We never fully realise our hopes and dreams. We may work hard to re-create the home that we have lost, but, says the Bible, it only exists in the presence of the heavenly father from which we have fled..."

Since you are the idealistic realist (or was it the realitic idealist? heh), friends come and friends go. At some point all of your friends will eventually get married, and the challenges of life will simply make the previously felt intimacy... difficult, if not impossible. And yes, even for the closest friend that you can find in this life, there is death too...

A stark reality that once occurred to me as I was reflecting over something very similar to what you've expressed, is that, there may be a lot of reunions and partings in this life, but in eternity we'd all be reunited again. But (and don't take this lightly), but, the fact remains that there will be a lot of these people who are dear to me now... that I may never see again in eternity.

Food is nice. Outings are nice. Hang outs are nice. Fun is nice.

But sometimes with eternity in mind, a lot of things really don't matter. Really.

7:10 AM  

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