Address: 1 HarbourFront Walk, Vivocity, #01-116, Singapore 098585

Imagine buying a kilogram of chocolate from Godiva - one of the more expensive Chocolatier in Singapore. That was what my girlfriend did. She is indeed crazy about chocolate but the reason why we were getting confectionery by the bucket-loads was that we intended them to be gifts. Her reason being that everybody likes chocolates.

Well…I for one was not really into the sweet. From young, my grandmother and my parents had drilled into my impressionable mind the heatiness of chocolate (incidentally, one of the few English words my grandmother is able to pronounce). Ang Mo (Caucasian) kids would probably look on in morbid fascination at how I would reject offers of Chocolate and run screaming away at the sight of the dark, molten stuff.

Heatiness is brought about by certain foodstuff that will supposedly upset the delicate balance of our body and induce ailments like fever, sore throat, coughing… The antidote to heatiness would be “liang”ness - a hokkien dialect term meaning coolness. “Liang”ness is brought about by eating certain foods like fruits (with notable exceptions like durian, lychee etc), vegetables and herbal teas. A particular friend of mine has even mentioned with full belief that hugging a watermelon to sleep would achieve the same effect of “liang”ness…

This perception of the heatiness of chocolate stayed with me till adulthood. A breakthrough came one day when I saw my girlfriend gorging on chocolate and not having any side effects. I started to fill up on the stuff to make up for lost time.

And where best to get fantastic chocolate but at Godiva. Each chocolate piece is at least close to S$2. Expect to pay upwards of S$20 for the smallest box sets there. My girlfriend and I shared a S$9 chocolate shake. It was dark, creamy, sinful and probably heaty - but I did not give a damn.