Saturday, May 2, 2009 ;
4:23 PM
The rest of my parents' trip here was spent with the grandkids.
They shopped at the local wet market, emart, and bought chesnuts... And my dad tried the local breakfast, haha.
We had not tried it ourselves and I was curious, so I led my parents on a short walk to this restaurant near my house to check it out. A lot of locals eat there each morning, so it must serve up rather delicious food, I guess.
I did tell my dad that he would do better buying some home and eating it at home. He preferred eating there because it was more convenient, and you don't have to clear a mess at home that way. I said ok. When we reached, the place was filled with so much smoke, my dad at once agreed that buying some food to go would be best. (Most restaurants don't have good ventilation and everyone smokes while eating, so the smoke can really concentrate inside any given shop.)
So we tried 2 shaobing, and 2 jianbing. I normally love the Taiwanese congyou jianbing because it is something like roti prata, very fragrant and crispy. But hmm, when we tried the food at home, we really couldn't bring ourselves to finish it up. My dad said the shaobing is nothing like the tao sar piah he is used to, even though this one has the same bean paste.
And then the jianbing has some sauce or spice that was not suitable to my palate at all.
I'm not saying the food is not nice cos the locals devour it like it's the best. It's just a difference in taste. When you are brought up on a certain taste, you just cannot accept something totally different. Just like the Hubei guys who said they cannot stomach salty beancurd because they've only ever eaten sweet ones.
So that was my parents' mini adventure. After that, they really stuck to imported food or foreign restaurants.
The Din Tai Fung "last supper" was super enjoyable for them. My dad loves the dou miao (Taiwanese vegetable) and xiaolongbao. My mom enjoyed everything, and also tried the 8 treasures glutinous rice.
That was on Sat, after the kids' art class. My dad caught a cold and was resting at home. I brought my mom along and she had the pleasure of sitting with ds2 for his art class. After that while Dh and ds2 waited for ds1 to end, I brought my mom to explore the rest of CF. She enjoyed watching the little girls dance too.
We bought food home from Din Tai Fung for my dad.
My dad packed only short sleeve shirts from Singapore yet the temperature fluctuated a lot. At night, it could be below 10deg and on Fri night, N kindly invited all of us to her house for dinner. After a good dinner with a mix of Tianjin and Taiwanese dishes, and lovely Taiwanese taiyang bing and pineapple tarts for dessert, our short walk home was really cold, with the strong winds blowing. We suspect my dad caught his cold then.
After that, he kept having the chills at home, even though the heater in his room was set at 30deg.
Oh yes, my mom went to school Friday morning for assembly cos ds1 requested her to go watch him perform a Chinese song. It was Celebrate China month and the Chinese teachers put up a performance during assembly. Earlier on, the kids had a Chinese song singing competition as well.
This is ds1 receiving a participation award for his songs. He sang "Xin Nian Hao" and "Kai Huo Che" for the competition. For the performance, he sang "Liang Zhi Lao Hu".
This award is not a big deal because lots of kids got gold, silver and bronze medals, especially bronze. A lot of the European kids who don't know much Chinese and didn't pronounce the words clearly got silver and bronze medals. Unfortunately, I think ds1 was judged based on a "native speaker, 1st language" standard, so he was marked down against the local Chinese and Taiwanese classmates. Dh was a little indignant cos he felt ds1 sang well. He was there with my mom.
Anyway, ds1 didn't seem to be aware of that. We don't compare him with other kids, so he in turn doesn't compare himself against others as well. He was very happy with his cert and so I am glad for that.
I didn't go for the assembly, so these pictures are courtesy of another mom, Kim, who took them for me! Thanks!
That's ds1's Chinese teacher, giving out the certs to them.
These 4 kids got the cert. Yup, the rest had medals. Only those who didn't participate in the competition didn't get anything.
The kids intently reading the certs.
ds1 was so happy his Waipo got to see him perform in school.
rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
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These 4 kids got the cert. Yup, the rest had medals. Only those who didn't participate in the competition didn't get anything.
