Another combined birthday celebration, sort-of. Mary's belated and Adrian's be-earlied. We had dinner with them and Jen at the new Viet Lang restaurant at the Arts House. Attentive and obliging service, and the food isn't bad either. I've never enjoyed paper-skin spring rolls before but the ones they served here had bite and taste, in no small part thanks to the bean sauce dip that made it work. We also had a fresh pomelo salad eaten on keropok discs; a prawn otah-like paste rolled around a piece of sugar-cane; and June ordered a fragrant oxtail soup as a starter.

For the main course, we had the pho bo -- beef noodles. Bits of beef, thinly sliced, finely edged with a little fat to give it the taste of cow goodness, without becoming overpowering. And the unexpected arrival of a tapioca cake with a lighted candle sticking out of it was Mary's little surprise for Adrian.

We were at the Arts House because Mary invited us to her show, "A Broadway Christmas Carol," an opportunity to parody famous show tunes set within the framework of a seasonally appropriate chestnut of a story. It's quite a funny show as you'll never know which popular show tune will come up next to advance the plot further. Quite a fun evening, spent in the room once occupied by the likes of D Marshall when he was Chief Minister of our little scrap of dirt we call our country.