Yes, that’s him in the video. He is Paul Ong, aka Don Juan de Porko, aka Man of Steel Stomach and Palate.

Okay, start loading up this video before you read on because it will take a while.

I purposely wrote a long long post and included a lot of rubbish photos so you can be somewhat entertained while waiting for the video to finish loading.

Now.

Remember how my friends and I almost died eating level 10 spicy buffalo wings?

Paul wasn’t with us that night, so we missed the chance of getting upstaged by him.

Paul is our club’s resident daredevil.

Paul and Cindy

That night, Erwin had laid this challenge out to the table, “If any of you can finish a whole plate of level 30 (six wings), I’ll buy you dinner every time we go out for the rest of your life.”

Nobody took up the dare. None of us could even finish eating a single level 10 wing, let alone six level 30s.

We all agreed that Paul was the only one among us who would do it. Some in our group doubted that he could actually complete the task, but we were all convinced that he would die trying. Yes, he’s that kind of guy.

When we related this to him, he, who once ate an entire bowl of wet chilli padi, scoffed at us. “Huh! How spicy can it be? I’ll eat three plates for you!!”

Yes, such is his bravado.

So, we planned our second trip to Sunset Grill & Pub. We made sure Paul was free that night. We made sure we had still cameras and video cameras fully-charged and ready. We made sure Paul had bought life insurance.

We also arranged a birthday celebration.

The first time at Sunset Grill, we were supposed to celebrate Joey’s birthday but we didn’t manage to do the song-singing-cake-cutting routine because, remember, we were all dying from the level 10 wings.

Here’s an archived photo of Joey (and me):

Well, this time, we had another birthday to celebrate.

Minou’s!

Minou is 10 years old!

In fact, all of us in the group are 10 years old, if you go by the candleage on our birthday cakes.

I’m turning 10 on July 23 this year. Remember that!

By the way, I wonder if anyone else feels vaguely embarrassed about having a whole restaurant gawk at you while your friends make the admirable (but unsuccessful) attempt to sing the birthday song to you in key.

The cake is really good. It’s a strawberry cheesecake from Bakerzin. I hate the top strawberry layer because it tastes like cough syrup, but the cheesecake beneath it is sooooo amazing.

I gave all the strawberry gunk to the Goonfather because he loves cough syrup. (I swear. He’s ecstatic whenever he gets a cough and has to go to the doctor.)

But the cheesecake is so good~! Even this photo of the cake all messed up after slicing is giving me a monstrous craving.

I ate so much that night!!! I had:

• 2 level 2 buffalo wings
• 1 level 5 buffalo wing
• 1 level 30 buffalo wing tip
• 1 mini burger
• 2 slices of cheesecake
• 3 deep fried button mushrooms
• Half a lamp chop
• Test bites of rib-eye steak, lasagne and waldorf salad

I have no food photos because my photographer broke his right hand a few days before this dinner and I thought it would be wicked of me to make him work.

But I have one overexposed photo of the level 30 buffalo wings:

And a photo of the Goonfather smelling it.

It smells damn horrible lah. You don’t want to eat it unless you’re Paul Ong, or his evil twin brother.

In case you’re interested to know, the buffalo wings start tasting horrible from level 5 onwards.

Really. I’ve said this once and I will say it again. For normal eating, stick to level 3 and below. (I haven’t tried level 4 so I can’t tell for sure.)

For showing off to easily-impressed friends, level 5 will do.

For showing off to skeptical friends, the minimum is level 10.

For showing off to (and possibly meeting) your maker, level 30.

I was able to manage the level 5, so all you easily-impressed peeps, please be very impressed.

Otherwise, go watch the video above.

Kell could also polish off the level 5 with not much of a problem, but he turned red. ROFLMAO.

Okay, the truth is, Kell turns red at everything. Alcohol, seafood, pretty girls.

(That last one is not entirely truthful. I just thought it would be fun to make him get into trouble with his fiance, although he doesn’t really need help in that department because one of his favourite hobbies is to Find Die (literal translation from the Chinese 找死), which just means that he enjoys dicing with the devil.)

It’s fun to make fun of my friends. Perhaps I should do that more often!

My friends

Right now, though, I have to go back to talking about buffalo wings.

The last record held at Sunset Grill was three people to one plate (two wings each).

Paul freaking ate the whole damn plate all by himself, effectively breaking the record twice over.

I don’t know if there’ll be anyone crazy enough to try and beat his record.

It’s truly an expensive torture. Each level 30 plate costs $33 (or thereabouts). That means each wing costs about $5.50. That’s an insane price for chicken wings, even for the big, chunky variety served at Sunset Grill. (The price goes up by 50 cents for every level.)

This plate of chicken wings never thought it would become a celebrity

We had all thought that the wings would be on the house if we could match the three-to-a-plate record. But we learnt that that was either an expired offer or an urban myth.

Apart from bragging rights, the only things you’d get for your trouble are a stupid paper certificate and two days’ worth of diarrhea.

Maybe that’s why nobody has broken the record till now. All the same, I DOUBT ANYONE CAN EVEN COME CLOSE TO MATCHING PAUL’S RECORD.

If you want to prove me wrong, let me know. I’ll be down with my video camera.

I’m currently addicted to the buffalo wings (level 3). I’m going there again tonight!!! Whee!

You can find directions to the place in my previous post.

Now, go watch the video and turn your audio up so you can hear all the corny lame conversations among the guys through the night.