Making a Pit Stop.

Cos' at the end of the day, it's the company that counts...

---

Ok, so everyone has written about the outing last Saturday. I am therefore obligated so publish one as well.

I had been shopping around for places to have dinner with friends. It's to celebrate Jan and my birthdays. Both on different dates, so we found an average. The sadness of working life meant that a couple of the invited friends weren't free on Jan's actual and we had to settle for a double happiness-type do. It also meant that we are all busy as teachers and have settled into the scheme of things already.

More or less anyway.

My intention was to have it at BigO. They have flyers touting their party for six with a complimentary cake thrown in. However, that didn't come to pass since parties as such must be done on weekdays.

After a little search, a-googling on the Internet, I found the spot - Pit Stop Café at Circular Road. It is quite a misnomer actually to say that we 'found' the place. The café is tucked away in some minor road and located on the second floor of some tiny, inconspicuous shophouse. I actually broke into a sweat while looking for the place. The haze currently covering the island didn't really help with the situation either.

Worth it...?

When I did finally find the place, I was thirsting for some iced water and it was served in a cutesy water dispenser - you know the cartoonus penguin modeled personal dispenser that is all the rage now. Just to digress, I think it is ridiculous to pay SGD25 for a glorified water bottle like this. It's basically an over-priced and over-designed piece of plastic, whose job can be carried out in top-notch quality by a run of the mill 1.5 litre (the penguin's capacity) mineral water bottle.

Anyway, while waiting for the other guest of honour to arrive (i.e. Jan) the few of us who managed to locate the place (just short of using GPS and calling the National Guards) settled for some easy chats and ordered a smattering of mathematically calculated servings of finger-foods (e.g. 11 pieces of spring rolls, 11 pieces of squid, although they claim it is calamari, etc).

Finally, our gastro-call far out cried our courtesies and we decided to order our dinners before Jan's arrival. The set dinners come with time allocation for games - every table order comes with a 2-hour allotments.

Did I forget to mention that Pit Stop is one of those new-fangled, enterprising-Singaporean getups that combine café, restaurant and a board gaming center in-one? They have a whole variety of group games available for your after-dinner pleasures.

So the food was edible. It's really nothing to rave about. The interior is ultra-bright and screams tres tres cheap. IKEA, IKEA everywhere. The saving grace of the establishment is the people - referring to the customers. Customers learn about this place mostly by word of mouth or a chance passing by of their weblog site.

When one learns of the place as 'full of fun', 'good company' - provided by the attending customers themselves, no less - they enter with a positive and expectant attitude. So once the sujet a manger is settled, the customers converge into their encapsulated world of their own 'good company' for a two-hour worth of fun. It really is a smart concept. It's basically getting people to congregate and pay to entertain themselves. How very clever.

All said and done, with the excellent company I had with myself that evening, it was a fabulous evening filled with cool fun and hot gossips, catching up with one another's life.

“Marking till dawn…”

“No social life…”

“Never seen the sun for (fill in appropriate period of time)…”

It's not that different from the time when I worked as an interior architect.

But as least with teaching, I actually enjoy it - the joy I see on the children's faces is reflected and kept in my heart.