Picnic at the Great Outdoors! Courtesy of Amex.
Daddy rounds us up and says we’re going to a picnic in a couple of weeks – how very unlike him at all. Fancy him sitting on a grass patch…
Anyway invites are soon in order, albeit a little late given the 2 weeks’ prior notice compared with the > 1 month’s notification year ago.
One for the record – last year’s Amex Plat Af’Fair via Virtway Events Portal.
Throwback to Daddy running around his avatar silly – ultimately finding his calligraphy, bouquet of flowers and Comic Strip!
This time round it would be in a hybrid form – physical Picnic Plush event (takeaway so you can partake of the food and picnic at wherever you please), followed by an evening livestream concert again for you to enjoy from the comforts of home or wherever you would be from 730pm on).
Guess what, Jason Mraz the man gave the JTwins a shoutout! No kidding…
So prep to the party started 2 weeks out with folks getting an EDM mailer soliciting an option of either:
- Full event (Picnic Plush + Livestream Concert), or
- Livestream Concert only
Knowing Daddy – he goes all out for Option#1 with further info on selection of meal option* + drive through timing for collection at the designated venue, post which a notification that a car decal would sent within the next couple of days leading up to the event.
We ended up going with Picnic Delights by (hi again) Masons!
*Picnic Delights/Classics by Masons, Specialties by Hopscotch or Signature by Halia for a Halal option.
Good job to the team for putting together and curating a list of picnic spots to enjoy the Great Outdoors in collaboration with Tatler! [Click below for the Top 10 Picnic Spots]
Saturday comes, and we make our way to Masons @ 8 Lock Road and although the dark clouds loomed, we were greeted by some sunshine from the team.
Surprisingly no queue and the drive through collection was really quick and efficient – scanning of a pre-shared QR code, member verification and sighting of car decal was all it took and off we headed to the pitstop.
The pit crew help load the loot into the boot…
Only thing was none of the food seemed kid friendly from when the previewed the menu, and while Daddy had given us his word on Macker’s breakie for us kids – we had to make sure he made good his word.
So out we went towards Hort Park (literally across the road) and made another pitstop for drive thru at McDonalds PSA, and boy was that a bee line – 40mins from when we got to the start of the line to when we made off with our orders. By which time however it was pouring! Still to satisfy Daddy’s curiosity we stopped by Hort just to recce if there was some shelter for us to take refuge in with the picnic basket in tow but decided otherwise when da Boss (not us for sure, but lets not get into that for now!) vetoed we should head home in view of the rain!
Back home we offloaded the stuff – boy there were loads of stuff.
We gobbled down our usual staples of Fillet O’Fish and Cheeseburger and then watched the grown ups wolf down their lunch.
Good thing about events like these – there’s always games – recall good ol’ Jump, Jump Reindeer for Christmas last year!
This year it was Pacman reloaded and Snake (yikes) [rebranded as Baggin’ Sunshine] with more booze prices up for grabs.
I tell you Daddy was engrossed, and glued to his phone all afternoon but we came in only a measly top 16 at best – he was obviously grumbling away…
Nonetheless he did tell us we won something at the lucky draw (we think it was a sure-win spin though!).
Fast forward to the evening live stream at 7.30pm – given it was obviously way past our bedtime, Daddy did record snippets of it, especially the shoutout part (to the JTwins)!
So much for a picnic which we brought back home (we’ll get to Hort Park at some point hopefully in the not-so-distant-future to unwrap and use the picnic mat + board games provided!).
For now, here’s to Jason and the team for putting together a Great Outdoorsy event for the year, and Jason Mraz himself with I’m Yours!