Tonight Do What: How Five Grown Men Spent Three Years Failing to Eat Dinner Together While Invoicing an Empty Chair

The Accused: Five Men, One Question, No Dinner

Jun Kai: The Chief Executive of Nah

Jun Kai is the founder, the chairman and the single greatest obstacle this group has ever faced. Every afternoon at 4.17pm, with the punctuality of a school bell and the leadership of a wet tissue, he types the same three words and then shoots down every answer like a man defending airspace nobody is trying to enter. The daily ritual:

Anything also can, except every single thing anyone has ever said. He is not a planner; he is a complaints department that opens at 4.17pm and closes without resolving a case. The one time in three years he proposed something himself, supper, he cancelled it at 9.40pm with “actually tired”, which makes Jun Kai the only man in history to reject his own idea for being his.

Hafiz: The Professional Confirmer, Amateur Arriver

Hafiz is the most enthusiastic man in this chat and the least physically present one on earth. He confirms everything instantly and with total conviction, then vanishes into a fog of excuses so thick it needs its own weather warning. Here he is, live from the road:

On the way mentally. Hafiz has attended more dinners in his heart than any man alive and almost none in person. The group still books him a seat, the way you leave the porch light on for a cat that ran away in 2023.

Sathish: The Mix Parlay Messiah, Cash-Out Coward

Sathish is a prophet with a betting app and a god who only speaks in odds. One Sunday at 2.40am, drinking since 9pm, he had a S$20 six-leg mix parlay five legs deep and paying S$4,380, with the last leg a Swedish fourth-division match he could not have found on a map. At 3.05am he cashed out and announced it like a moon landing:

Ten minutes. That is how long Sathish held the title of financial genius before a Swedish striker he had never heard of took it off him. He won S$592 and mourned it like a death in the family, and the next Sunday he held his nerve on a S$150 slip and lost the lot, making him the only man on record to learn a lesson in the wrong direction.

Marcus: “Mr Checking” / Pending Approval Since 2023

Marcus is not a friend; he is a government department with a four-minute processing time and no appeals process. Every invitation is received, stamped, forwarded to a higher authority who has never typed a word in this chat, and returned with the same verdict. The bureaucracy in motion:

The higher authority is his girlfriend, who runs his calendar the way an absentee landlord runs a flat: never seen, always obeyed, somehow taking a cut. Marcus has never once said “I don’t want to”, so his friends have had to reconstruct his entire personality from three years of rejected paperwork. They no longer invite him to things; they submit applications.

Wei Jie: The Man Who Invoiced an Empty Chair

Wei Jie is the only man in this chat who has never lost a cent on a night out, because he treats friendship like a tax audit. The calculator comes out before the second round lands, and the answer always ends in cents and arrives with the warmth of a parking summons:

He billed a man for a dinner the man did not attend, on the grounds that the man had said he would, which is either the most principled act in this chat or the founding document of a cult. Wei Jie has never ruined a night and never saved one; he just waits at the exit with a receipt, like the grim reaper of group dinners.

Saga One: The Steamboat That Died of Natural Causes

On Friday 10 April, Jun Kai asked the question at 4.17pm and the group did the impossible: it agreed. It took five hours of steamboat versus mala versus “somewhere chill”, a venue that does not exist and has been searched for with religious devotion since 2023, but by 7.30pm it was settled: steamboat, 8pm, Wei Jie’s flat. Then the host attached his terms and conditions, and the evening began to die the way all their evenings die, slowly and in lowercase:

Read it again. The man who asked the question killed the answer. He waited until a pot had been priced, a friend had confirmed and another had bought seafood, and then he pulled the plug like a toddler who has just discovered light switches.

Sathish did not return the prawns. He carried them home, fried the lot in garlic at 10.40pm and posted a photo to the group with no caption, and nobody replied. It is the saddest image in 38,420 messages, and at 4.17pm the next day Jun Kai typed “tonight do what” like an arsonist asking who wants a barbecue.

Saga Two: The Fifth Chair

On Saturday 7 March the group booked five seats at a Korean barbecue buffet at S$34.90 a head. Hafiz confirmed at 6.02pm, was “after shower” at 7.10pm, “just reaching” at 7.50pm and “mum called, sorry bro” at 8.40pm, by which time the other four had spent an hour grilling meat next to an empty chair with its own tongs.

The restaurant charged for five. Wei Jie, who had been waiting his whole life for this exact moment, sent the payment request before the bill was even closed, and what followed is the first legal defence in history that doubles as a confession:

He paid on the third day. “Next time I’ll sit” is now the group’s official greeting, typed by everyone except Hafiz at 6.02pm, and the chair remains the most reliable representative he has ever sent anywhere. It was also the only member of the group who stayed for the whole dinner.

The Dishonours List

The Nah Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Jun Kai. Three years of asking, and no answer good enough for him, including his own.

The Empty Chair Memorial Plaque goes to Hafiz. His seat has attended more dinners than he has, and paid the same.

The Swedish Fourth Division Scholarship goes to Sathish. Funded entirely by his own thumb at 3.05am.

The Pending Approval Medal goes to Marcus. He will collect it once he has checked.

The Furniture Billing Excellence Award goes to Wei Jie. First man in Singapore to charge a chair for dinner.

The Group Dishonour goes to all five of you. One shared calendar, zero shared meals and a social life that exists entirely as a draft.

The Ruling

You guys did not build a friendship; you built a waiting room with Wi-Fi and called it brotherhood. Three years of the same question have produced one steamboat that never happened, one chair that paid for dinner and one man eating prawns alone in the dark. The only thing this group has ever successfully organised is its own disappointment, and Jun Kai will ask for more at 4.17pm tomorrow.