Sat

6pm

We held a Singapore-style BBQ for about 40 of our church friends, not including young children. We invited about 60 but several of them couldn't come due to earlier commitments or travel trips.

We invited the families of all the Elders and Deacons first, and then others whom we were close to and who had helped us a lot.

When I handed them invitations, it said that it was a "Get-to-know-us-better BBQ" to thank them for their help. So they were asked not to bring anything, except for their own lawn chairs as we did not have enough chairs. 2 of them still brought a plant gift. So pretty!

Making ice cubes started a week early. I didn't want to spend money buying ice, so I just kept freezing and putting them into ziploc bags then I ran over to the church freezer to store them there since I didn't have enough space in mine! :-)

I marinated all the meats on Friday. We didn't do seafood cos it's expensive and not fresh, so it wouldn't turn out well. Mainly it was chicken wings, chicken breast for kebabs (they spell it kabobs here), pork fillet and beef. We borrowed a lot of large bowls and trays from the church building too.

They were used to patties and hamburger buns and althoug initially we wanted it to be a truly Asian/ Singaporean experience, in the end we still relented and bought buns/ bread, dill pickles (bread and butter, they call it), mustard, BBQ sauce, and hotdog sausages. We also bought potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweet corn, mushrooms, peppers, onions, marshmallows, ice cream, cake, muffins, soda... I also caved in and made salad, which I normally don't for BBQs back home.

For tomatoes and peaches, I went to my neighbour Darlene's backyard to pick them (not the church member). She did say to help myself even if she weren't in, but that Sat morn, she really wasn't in, and I felt like an intruder to go into her backyard all alone and pick those fruits! I kept looking up to see if she'd appear, but she didn't, so I left a thank you card at her door later on, telling her what I took. Anyway, I took a whole bag of tomatoes and peaches, sufficient for the whole BBQ. Peaches, plums, apricots and nectarines taste really good when grilled, so we had them cubed. (Basically those fruits with a large pit/ stone do well being grilled. Mangoes too, but we didn't have any.)

I had also worked on a presentation the whole week, putting together some video clips, photos, MTVs of Singapore, church back home and our jobs/ families/ friends. All the guests were told to gather at the church auditorium at 6pm for the presentation, then 6.30pm BBQ starts at our front lawn.

So I was at the church building at about 5.30pm setting the stuff up. To my horror I found that the program I used to make my presentation, Open Office (a freeware), could not be opened by Microsoft Powerpoint, which is the software at the church's laptop. By that time, some people were already streaming in, so I decided to just tell them what happened and do a presentation by just opening all the files in sequence manually and talking about them.

They were all so punctual. Wow. So I started at 6pm. dh was at home manning the fire and setting up last min things. Kids were supposed to be with him but they ran crying along with me, so Imade them sit in the front pew. Halfway through, ds2 wanted me to carry him. So I did the presentation carrying him! So unlike my lecturing days in hc. haha

I didn't finish showing many of the things, cos manually opening them took more time. The slides had many photos in 1 page, and video clips were all embedded, ready to play with one click. Manual opening took much more time. But they did have an overall picture of Singapore, the languages we speak, the various ethnic groups, the flats (they were fascinated), the food... About our church back home... they asked a lot of questions while I showed pics of my students and classes too. They asked if my lectures were in English! ( i would not know how to complete a sentence in the Biology notes in Mandarin!)

So we were very glad they knew more about Singapore and the church back home. They didn't know we had such an active congregation too.

And they? Many of them wrote me thank you cards and in them, they said they enjoyed the presentation and the food a lot, especially to know more about our life back home.

After that, we went to tuck in. We were glad we bought some American comfort food! Cos all our muffins and buns were consumed. What was left in the largest quantities? The chicken wings! haha. They don't really like meat with bones! To think in Spore, the chicken wings are the most popular.

Anyway before the BBQ, dh explained they could use the bamboo skewers to get any combination they want on their kebabs. We put laid out all the diced meats, mushrooms, peaches, pineapples, peppers, onions etc there. We noticed that the younger set were especially creative, skewering all kinds of combis.

Towards the end, I brought out the cake with one candle. Before that, at the church, I had asked Gary Robinson to lead in singing happy birthday to dh once I brought the cake out, cos he has a great loud voice. :-) So he did and led everyone in singing to dh, who had a surprise. :-) It was actually his birthday too, but he thought he was preparing the BBQ just for the get-to-know-session. :-)

It was really enjoyable, and we feel much closer to them now, and I am sure they feel the same.