KEEPING THE FIRE OF THE OLD BOYS' NETWORK BURNING!

On Friday, my wife & I met up with David & his wife Jenny again, but this time together with three old classmates from the Polytechnic days of the sixties. They were Hock Tin, John Tan & Michael Chia.

The venue was Moon Hing Teochew Restaurant at Key Point on the junction of Beach Road & Jalan Sultan.

The occasion was essentially to touch base with each other, to keep the fire of the old boys' network burning, so to speak.

Actually, in the traditional sense, an old boys' network refers to an informal but almost exclusive gathering of people, who went to the same school or college or university at some point in time, with the purposeful objective of helping each other to move forward by providing connections or doing favours, especially in business or politics.

However, in our case, since all four of us have already retired from business or the corporate world, we just wanted to hang out together, once in a while in our Third to Fourth Age.

In reality, we have wanted very much to expand the informal group to include more old classmates, but unfortunately in Singapore it is often very difficult to get them together on a particular day or for a particular event.

As David & I have concurred, some of them probably did not want to be in touch for reasons best known to themselves.

Getting together somehow requires some form of personal commitment, besides a genuine interest in social networking.

Michael Chia then came up with the idea that, rather than going Dutch as in previous occasions, one of the members should assume the paymaster for the occasion, & the role would go to next member on rotation.

Michael Chia paid for the lunch on Friday. So, I volunteered to take the role of paymaster on the next occasion, tentatively scheduled on first week of December. The final date & venue would be decided later.

Nonetheless, the gathering was fun [naturally, to talk about good old times, to share useful ideas, as well as to deliberate on current events], but the lunch at Moon Hing wasn't exciting. Michael had pre-ordered a set lunch for 8 persons, which included:

- prawn paste rolls ("heh cho")
- braised goose meat with soft bean curd;
- steamed pomfret;
- stir-fried cereal prawns with pineapple & tomato slices;
- white radish soup;
- oyster omelette - sorry, the oysters seemed invisible;
- fried tou miao (vegetables);
- yam paste with pumpkin & gingko nuts ("or nee") - but I couldn't see any nuts in my portion;
- freshly cut fruits;

The lunch ended with some tiny cups of Oolong tea.

To me, the standard of cooking, Toechew style, has dropped somewhat, when compared to the last time I was there, about four to five years ago. At that time, the place was a bit run-down, but this time the place has been spruced up.

If I were to compare it with Lee Kuih (Ah Hoi), another well-known Teochew restaurant, on Mosque Street in Chinatown, regretably Moon Hing would be one notch down, at least from my perspective.

Fortunately, the lukewarm gastronomical experience at Moon Hing did not dampen our spirits. We later adjourned to the Singapore Recreation Club for coffee & tea, as well as for continuing our yakety-yak.