Adventures in pizza and chocolate eggs


This afternoon I went to Tanglin Mall to buy my wife a chocolate egg. For the last few years, we’ve been in Hong Kong before Easter and that’s meant we can go to Great, (a supermarket where the name refers to the magnjtude of the prices as well as the quality) so I can drop half my monthly disposable income on an egg from Cbarbonel et Walker, imported at great expense from London, and then marked up for my delectation.

But Singaporean supermarkets are not Great. All they had was a big sign declaring Easter, and a sad little array of Cadbury’s Caramel eggs. Not even a Creme Egg in sight. I panicked, thought about buying her six free range and dipping them in chocolate, then went out to look for the super expensive French chocolate shop down the street. Which had closed two years ago.

What I did come across was a bike shop with a balance bike in the front window, and after some dithering about whether my daughter should have a pink bike or not, I stumped up $160 for it (30% off as it was the last one), a bunch of roses for my wife and a loaf of bread for Destroyer. La Serpiente had developed a bit of a fever and was sprawled on the sofa all afternoon, which was actually a mercy. I had planned to take her with me on my wifely egg hunt, but that would not have turned out well for anyone.

Instead, I returned home with an unfeasibly heavy balance bike (clearly overengineered with thoughts of the destructive power of small children) which I plonked down in the hallway and then called La Serpiente off the sofa to see.

She stared at it for a few moments, a look of almost incandescent glee on her face, incapable of speech, and then spent a happy hour trying to ride it up and down the hallway. She hasn’t yet figured out how you have to countersteer with the handlebars when you push forward, and it’s fun to watch how this skill develops. Give her a few weeks.

This evening we went to see friends for dinner. They’d ordered pizza and we were ready for a relaxing meal before putting the kids down, except they had ordered from Uber Eats. Which meant the pizza arrived two hours after they’d ordered it, the delivery guy went to the wrong house (apparently 153 and 159 are the same number) and the pizza was stone cold. Appropriate for something delivered at glacial pace. It’s interesting that there’s no way to complain to Uber about this (maybe a consequence of too many people complaining and needing to reduce the load on their call centre, if they have one). It’s also dismaying to think that 20 years ago, Pizza Hut would have given you the pizzas for free – what was progress meant to be, again?

Still, nice to think La Serpiente could probably deliver pizza faster than the professionals.


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