My hair was gelled and spiked, my chin and upper lips cleanly shaven of my holiday moustache, and I traded berms for an actual pair of long pants.
My plan had been to be as dishevelled as can be during my Chinese New Year vacation back in Singapore, but the dress code for the night called for some serious grooming.
My secondary school classmates had suggested a rather fancy Japanese restaurant at Marina Bay Sands and the dress code for the highly pretentious place is smart casual.
Turns out, my effort to dress up was well worth it - nobody decided to turn up at the fancy place in their singlet, berms and slippers to eat overpriced sushi.
The interior décor of the ostentatious place was out of this world.
Literally.
I felt like I stepped into a Hollywood movie setting where westerners called the shots and had free play to decide how Asia should look like.
Let's place a big statue there... ah... now we look oriental. Okay, let's build a bridge here because Asians love their bridges. And let there be red lanterns all over. All Asian households have them, don't they?
I swear the owners of this place is seeking revenge on Asians.
After all, we do have hawkers in Singapore that sell "western food", where chicken chop is served with rice mixed with sticky brown gravy.
Jut then, an overly chirpy waitress - who either had to love her job very much or was high on something - led us to our table.
As I stepped further into quasi oriental Nippon, I started drowning in the background dance music.... boomz, boomz, boomz.
All that's missing is the appearance of a mystical fire-breathing dragon wriggling its way across the 3-metre tall interior and westerners suddenly popping up in every corner of the place, dressed in warrior suits that look like they're made out of leftover cheongsam cloths and straw mats, churning out fire balls with their bare palms.
Before I even had the time to nurse the early stage of a throbbing headache, another very happy waiter came by with the menu, which would decide how to overcharge us, depending on what we ordered.
These workers have to be dealing with illegal substance to be this happy.
"Isn't this place simply amazing?" Francis the most shallow of the group says. "Bookings here are always full. Good thing I pulled some strings."
At that moment, the only thing I felt like pulling was my hair. Or the trigger.
But I keep reminding myself that I love this group of friends, no matter how some of them have turned out to be.
I smiled and looked at Nisa my best girl friend and Terry my best straight friend for comfort, and we gave one another quiet peer support.
But enough of the venue.
Let's move on to the food.
Oh, the food.
I can never get enough of it.
Literally.
"You gotta be kidding me," Nisa says, scooping up the wild mushroom fried rice.
If a surgeon had stapled your stomach, or if an evil witch had turned you into an anorexic dwarf the size of a flower pot, then the portions would have been just nice.
Francis looked pleased with himself, and proceeded to pass around some salmon dish that was enough only for half the table.
Terry leaned in and whispered that we will need to eat proper Tze Char after this meal, to which Nisa nodded eagerly and proceeded to wolf down her spoonful of fried rice in one single bite.
After the activity which some describe as dinner, Francis the banker had to excuse himself for drinks with his business associates.
Hui Min our class monitor had to go home because her two kids (4 and 7) are giving their nanny a hard time.
Jeff, who would love to stay on but can't because he has to go back and help his (henpecker) wife, also had to leave.
Which was just perfect - Nisa, Terry and I (the three musketeers of the class) didn't have to find an excuse to drive to Upper Bukit Timah for immediate supper.
Along the way, the topic of eating out came up.
We used to love eating out as teens and we never complained about food.
After school, the group of us would take a bus to Chinatown Point just to order ayam penyet from the food court there (the portions were huge by the way), followed by a plate of fruits where we would share and chat our youthful lives away.
Eating out then was a joy.
In the late-90s, we used to enjoy the occasional treats when we were out.
At Jack's Place (I still remember Nisa had looked very pleased with her order of sambal steak), at Ponderosa (where there was free flow salad with every order of main course), and at the pre-developed Marina South area, which was filled with barbequed meat buffet eateries (Terry had once overeaten and then puked his dinner for all to see at the nearby MRT station).
Those were the days.
So, what changed?
Have we grown up to be fussy pots? Are we so pampered now we're so difficult to please? Have the food standards dropped?
My trip back to Singapore made it all the more obvious that I'm difficult to please when eating out.
And it's not just at the high-end places.
One of my biggest cravings was hawker fare.
Particularly chwee kueh, char tow kway and rojak.
Nisa, Terry and I had gone to Ghim Moh market earlier in the month in my honour.
If you're ever forced to eat Styrofoam with tiny bits of crushed receipts, they would probably taste like the chwee kueh sold by the old couple at Ghim Moh market.
To be fair, there had been warning signs: No one at the market queued up for the chwee kueh there.
The only saving grace is that most of the hawkers there are still locals.
The other night, J and I were at Geylang Serai for dinner and I was about to order ayam penyet when I made a swift U-turn midway: The hawker turned out to be a China woman.
"What?!" Nisa said with a high-pitched yelp, stirring her Teh Haliah with exasperation.
"China woman selling Malay food, westerners selling Japanese food, Asians selling western food... the world is indeed a melting pot," Terry said with a sagely nod.
"I think all future outings should be at one of our homes with homecooked food," I decided.
Just then, our Maggie goreng with egg and murtabak arrived, delivered by our friendly China staff at Al Azhar.
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Adam's stories are based on real life events and inspired by real people
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