Dinner with Haris

We had dinner with Haris last Tuesday at the La Risata Italian Restaurant. Haris wanted to eat italian food (I wonder if it's Brad Pitt's favourite food as well!). It was supposed to start at 8 pm. Nizam, Sash, Yusof and I came fashionably late (30 minutes late..because Sash overslept!) to find Maz, Zanapiah, Haris and wife, Edmund and wife waiting patiently for us. Ramani came really fashionably late (1 hour later) because she got lost. KM understandably declined to join us.

Actually it's the first time that we all got together to have a meal. I realised during the revision course with our fellow colleagues from HUKM that we were so different from our counterpart in HUKM. There, each of them have a partner to study with and they tend to do things together. Here, we are individualistic, prefering to do things alone. I think it's a great disadvantage to do things alone. I have always believed that there is strength in number. Unfortunately for the life of me, I could not get anyone to study with me during the period leading up to the exam. Thankfully most of us made it!

Back to the dinner. The place was painted a gaudy red. My camera phone with its low resolution made things worst. I DO NOT have tremors for the record. So, pardon the shaky pics. You won't be able to see Haris well in the pic above. Its kinda blur. I like to think he prefered it that way.

The food? Well, as expected, they were pricey to say the least. I didn't think they tasted very nice either. We all ordered appetisers. Most of them ordered something called "Bushetta" (sure sounds like some waste product of bovine nature). It's actually just garlic bread topped with some chopped up marinated tomatoes. Not too bad especially when you are starving.

I decided to try something different. I ordered fried calamari, sharing it with Yusof and Sash. I swear the italian chef inside the kitchen must have been either a health conscious freak or he lost his salt shaker. The calamari (SQUID) were totally bland. Another plausible explaination could be that the squids were actually FRESH water variety, having made an incredible evolutionary jump from sea water to river water! So, between the 3 of us, we wasted half a bottle of salt on the calamri in order to get it down.

Almost everyone ordered some kind of fruit juices. I, being post call and having not slept much the night before decided to go for coffee. The ice coffee served was about 1:1000 the dilution of ANY Kopi-ping (ICED COFFEE) I can get from any restaurant. I was hoping that some caffeine would keep my eyes opened. Alas! I was denied the fix!

Nizam ordered something which actually tasted rather nice. I forgot the name but the pic is on the left. I believe they used a microtome to slice the meat!!! You could almost see through it! But it tasted good.


For the main course, Zanapiah ordered sea food spaghetti which was rather tasty but a tat spicy. Sash decided on John Dory which really (pardon me) resembled something that the dinosaur left behind in one of the Jurassic Park movies. The Dory was disappointing (I guess the same chef must have prepared it). It was bland, bland, bland!!!!



I can't remember what Yusof had even though he was just sitting next to me. (Shows how tired I was!). I decided on Fettucine with scallops. It was nice but rather pricey (RM28 for a small plate!). Nizam ordered the same thing and commented that he didn't like it. "Baby Food" he said.

But the company was great! It was the first time all of us had a look at Edmund's bride to be (they are tying the knot tomorrow!). My only gripe was that the table was square so we couldn't really talk to everyone. But laughter and jokes filled the air. A great sense of relief can be felt in the air. And most of all, a sense of gratitude to GOD who made it all possible through a great guy named Haris. Thanks again Haris! May we all become physicians with a heart like yours.