New Year BBQ @ Tanjung Duren - what a blast!
To end 2006 and welcome 2007 in style, I and several friends planned for a plain and simple BBQ at Yukichi’s place - which turned out to be quite far from plain and simple ^_^;
First off, we didn’t even have a BBQ grill! So off I and Yukichi go to a nearby Carrefour based on my earlier discovery of a discounted grill sale there - only to find out that it’s been nearly sold out! Luckily we could snatch one of the remaining three grills (the one already assembled as display - we’re such lazy bums) and continued on the rest of the shopping objectives. After overcoming our initial amazement at how expensive things are nowadays (less than 100kg of raw sirloin would empty my paycheck!), we finally made off with a lot of meat and meat products, a pound of marlin, a grilled baked chicken (to be re-grilled for quick serving), a whole watermelon, seasonings, some corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, a jumble of BBQ utensils, as well as the celebrated grill itself. We didn’t buy any firework due to the venue of the party - smack in the middle of the Mediterania Apartments at Tanjung Duren, totally surrounded by four tall apartment buildings.
Spared from the grisly prospect of having to assemble the grill, we spent our preparation time on actually preparing the foodstuffs. This didn’t take very long, and soon the whole hungry pack began hauling the food train down towards the poolside of Mediterania Apartment where we planned to hold the event. It turned out there was another, much larger crowd with the same idea as ours starting to assemble their own BBQ party - not that we mind, for reasons we’ll explain below ^__^
Lessons learned:
1. Bring some bloody matches! Good thing there’s that other BBQ crew ^_^;
2. Put some tinder and make sure your charcoals are as dry as possible so that you can start BBQ-ing faster! We forgot these too, but fortunately we did bring along a small can of spiritus jelly - it sure burrrrnnnnnssss.
3. If you’re inconsiderate jerks (unlike us) you actually CAN hold a fireworks party in the middle of Mediterania Apts… The loud bangs resonate all over the place, and some firework rockets actually struck the surrounding apt buildings (they do make nice sights as they explode though, I hope Tonny got the pictures right so that I can post it later). In the end apartment security had to stop them after some rockets exploded just right outside of people’s window… One actually strayed inside the 30th floor and nearly blew up the elevator motors ^_^;
For us it’s actually a nice sight to see however, especially since we don’t have to pay a single penny and the whole shebang happens nearly overhead. Literally under the exploding fireworks we watched and gnawed on our food peacefully although on some certain firework displays it almost looks like we’re in the middle of Baghdad during Desert Storm - heck we could smell the gunpowder!
Yes, there were misfires. And yes, we watched gleefully ^___^
4. Buy only what you can eat - it turned out that despite our sincere efforts we could eat less than half of the foodstuff we bought ^_^; This is easily solved the next morning as we held an indoor BBQ at Yukichi’s apt to take care of the unfinished business!
5. The weather report is not always reliable! Looks like weathermen were a little bit slack that night as a little drizzle managed to sneak in… However we found to our pleasant surprise that our little BBQ grill was highly manportable (it can be lifted easily by one man, along with all blazing charcoals and sizzling sirloins on top!) and we’ve set up our equipments to be able to be unpacked easily - in only minutes after the drizzle ended we’ve already redeployed and continued the party!
Overall, it’s a great experience - we can’t wait for our next BBQ party ^_^
And, of course…
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!
