Chef

Lunched alone on Saturday; it was a small Malaysian restaurant at TST.

I ordered laksa and samosa. Before they came, I was thoroughly impressed:

Two old ladies arrived soon after me and sat at the table next to mine; they were obviously new customers to this restaurant, and no doubt one was a vegetarian - she ordered tofu and fried turnip cake, and her friend the famous chicken rice.

In a moment a chubby figure marched out from the kitchen, with a small note from the waitress on his hand and the word chef written on his face; he went straight to the old women - to clarify whether egg, ginger and garlic could be used in the dish. His tone was not polite, but he was obviously serious about the dish he was going to prepare.

As I often told Bonnie, for him I put a tick on my mental personnel record.

A few minutes later my lunch appeared - on the hand of this very chef. I was sitting next to the door of the kitchen, and, seeing no waitress around, the obsessive man himself handed the laksa and samosa to me - the latter was just hot from the frying pan.

Another tick.

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Our astronaut had the first space walk in the afternoon. It was of course a great success. Nonetheless I believe we could make a better country not by having more space adventures, but to have more laksa chef or people of his kind - to be serious about the small thing at his own hand, be it turnip cake, samosa, or milk.