Baby Shower

Though i have been invited to many Vietnamese-organized parties in my company, i realized i have not posted anything on them.

This time, its an early "Baby Shower" party for 2 of the lab girls.... going away for maternity leave for a couple of months. Vietnamese party = Vietnamese food.... loads of them, in fact. Funnily, i dun find them familiar at all, even though Singapore is well-known to have cuisines of all sorts.
One of my favorites is this spring roll which they call bo` bi'a.
Not our usual "Popiah" as you can see, and not pronounced in the same manner too. Its basically like our "Chee Cheong Fun", but with much thinner "skin", and filled with all sorts of vegetables and shrimp/pork/beef.
It is usually dipped in peanut sauce, which i find it a striking resemblance with our Satay sauce.







Another hot favorite of mine is the ba'nh nam. Its just like a piece of flour cake, with some kind of shrimp concotion on top. My inexperienced taste buds could only reconize the taste of the shrimp....the rest of the flavours are kinda....ermm.. foreign??... But its simply delactable!










Some Vietnamese aunties noticed how much i was enjoying the food and further probed about my opinion of getting a Vietnamese girlfriend who is able to satisfy my tastebuds....goodness. Almost feeling myself blushing, i politely excused myself to get more food... heh.

Here is a pic of some of my wonderful, hospitable and kind, Vietnamese colleagues.


On a final note, i wonder if i would still be able to enjoy such small & cosy company events in Singapore. I'm beginning to like the culture here. And i'm falling in love with the typical US no-OT work culture. Somehow, it answers many Singaporeans' dream of having quality family life....and it answers the government's concerns about keeping families together. What is the point of having one "Eat with your family day", but eat in your cubicle for the rest of the 364 days?