Annie

Alex's first musical today. I'd bought B tickets to Annie as her Christmas present. No desire at all to see it myself but as she has attended so many orchestral concerts on my behalf I really can't complain.

We caught the train down to Central and crossed under spitting skies into Belmore Park, filled with stalls and lanterns celebrating Chinese New Year. Alex was perched upon my shoulders holding the umbrella.

Entering Market City in search of lunch we encountered an acrobatic lion dance, jumping between the tops of tall and narrow poles. The food court range in Market City is now quite disappointing. At least you can buy cendol with sugar syrup rather than the usual palm sugar.

Alex was happy to catch the light rail down to the casino and Lyric theatre. Though he has had no exposure to the music of Annie before he has recently been watching a lot of Playschool episodes featuring music and shows. His greatest fascination with the production was the mechanics of changing the fantastic sets followed by joining in with the applause at the end of the songs. He fell asleep midway through the first act.

Halfway through the second act he began to get a bit antsy and so did I. It was difficult to fault the quality of the production, though Alan Jones really couldn't keep up his american accent as Roosevelt. I feel a bit bad that any of my money went towards the right wing radio jock, but I couldn't begrudge his seemingly genuine enjoyment. Julie Goodwin was a standout as Grace with a powerful and clear voice. It's just the story which was rather boring, along with a lack of standout music.

Frankly, if I heard a guy saying and doing some of the things that Mr Warbucks did, then I'd want to have them investigated as a potential sexual predator...

A very packed tram carried us back to Paddy's Markets where we purchased some fruit and vegetables for tomorrow's Chinese New Year lunch. Though it was a little early we had dinner at an Uiyghur restaurant. All of us enjoyed the flavoursome carrot and lamb pilaf and the succulent and tender chunks of lamb, though the thick bread was better at the other Uiyghur restaurant next door.

There are a couple of new Malaysian restaurants in the area: Mo-mo Teh and Nyonya. The latter had quite a queue, but we didn't like its parent Ginger and Spice at all. As we walked back we spotted another huge queue outside Mamak. It may be trendy, but I found I got much better Milo ais and roti canai for less than $2 at the rundown shed behind the Parkroyal Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Silly trendies.

Alex had seen others eat ice creams at Annie and I had promised him one, so we popped down to McDonalds for a 50c softserve cone. He was so happy after that, walking the whole way back up to Belmore Park, where the festival was in full swing. We spent the last of the notes in our wallets on a ticket for him on the bungy trampoline. He loved bouncing high up, though he needed a bit of assistance from the operator. Forget Annie, I think that was his highlight of the day!