Berbuka Puasa @ Holiday Inn, Melaka (2010)

It's the holy month of Ramadan once again, a month of fasting and moderation observed by our Muslim friends. Thus, as per standard practice every year, I treated my good friend, Zufri, to a "buka puasa" (break fast) meal. This time round, we opted for the buffet at Holiday Inn Melaka.

It was a working day, leaving the office in time would be a challenge, as usual. Luckily, I managed to wrap things up early, and thus made it out of the office at 6.15pm, enough time to beat the traffic congestion to our destination, some 30 odd minutes away.

During our drive, we were a little concerned about having no place to park, with the sky giving just a hint of an impending drizzle / downpour (who knows for sure?). To our pleasant surprise, the small parking lot right in front of the hotel entrance was barely half filled with cars. Ample space to park, but where was everyone?

Proceeding into the hotel lobby, we made our way up to the "ES.SENSE KITCHEN" on the first floor, where Zufri had made earlier reservations. That may have been unnecessary, as there was less than 30% occupancy throughout the entire course of the buffet dinner.

Now, the food was served in typical buffet-style, with many, many dishes to choose from. So many, in fact, that I failed to sample each dish, even taking minute portions of just about every dish I came across. Stomach capacity seems to have gone down, compared to my younger days...! :)

To be honest, the food wasn't anything to cry home about. At least the, um, ice-cream was soft and creamy (that's all that comes to mind at this time). Cost per pax is RM78 per head, before adding in the customary 5% government tax and 10% service charge. A comparison of Ramadan buffets in the city revealed that this was pretty much the going rate these days.

Well, there was a down side to tonight's episode. Barely three feet away from our table was situated a large, LG flatscreen LCD TV (quite a norm these day). Instead of something cheerful or entertaining on, I found myself watching a 10-second delayed telecast of a tourist bus hostage situation in Manila on BBC. From what I gathered, a disgruntled policeman held up a bus of mostly Chinese tourists with a semi-automatic rifle. His demands? To be re-instated into the police force after being terminated a year ago.

You can tell from the detail I am relating here, how attention-sapping the news was. I felt sad for those tourists who were held hostage - especially since even the police did not know if there was anyone left alive in the bus. Read more about this and the conclusion over at the BBC website : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11055015

Back to the present, I'm happy and give thanks to be able to treat my friend to a nice meal (call it our personal annual dinner), and look forward to holding on to this "tradition" next year too! :)