It was a boisterous and lively Chinese New Year dinner that dragged on for five hours, with guests shuttling between tables to chit-chat and pose for wefies with one another, recalls case 130 of a celebration he and his wife attended at Safra Jurong on Feb 15.
"The atmosphere was upbeat and people were happy," the 66-year-old, who would give his name only as Mr Tan, tells The Sunday Times.
The dinner would later be identified as a coronavirus cluster, and was once the nation's largest one with 47 cases linked to it.
Never did the Tans - seated at table 28 - expect it to turn into a nightmare that saw them struggling to survive in the intensive care unit (ICU) and having multiple therapy sessions to relearn how to walk and talk.
But the couple count themselves lucky, as someone at the same function also contracted the coronavirus but never recovered. The 70-year-old man - case 128 - tested positive for the virus on March 6 and died of complications on April 14.
The Tans, who work as food handlers, tested positive for Covid-19 three weeks after the party.
Within days, their lungs became severely inflamed, they were gasping for air and on the verge of dying.
For 31 days, Mr Tan fought for his life in the ICU at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital (NTFGH). He was in hospital for a total of 49 days.
His 68-year-old wife, who is case 129, was at the same hospital for 40 days - 15 in the ICU.
Strangely, no one else in their circle of friends that night was infected, Mr Tan says in Mandarin.
"We were just unlucky. We didn't know there were people who were sick at the dinner."
Being members of that group, the couple decided to attend the event organised by Ms Liang at Safra Jurong's Joy Garden restaurant, despite being aware of the coronavirus situation.
Some 200 guests had to undergo temperature checks before attending the dinner, which featured song-and-dance performances and a traditional lohei tossing. There were an estimated 30 tables.
"We didn't know everyone seated at our table that night," says Mr Tan, adding that he did not notice anyone who was particularly sick.
At their table of 10, the Tans believe they were the only ones who caught the virus. But Mr Tan points out: "We didn't mingle with friends much and didn't move from table to table... but some people did come over to take photos.
The couple do not know the 70-year-old man who died, but Mr Tan says the episode has prompted them to think twice before committing to future social gatherings.
Mr Tan was the first to report the onset of symptoms.
It started innocuously enough with a cold on Feb 24. He visited a general practitioner on the same day. On Feb 29 and March 1, he visited the same doctor again after his symptoms did not let up.
Over the next few days, he felt lethargic and did not eat or drink much. His bones and back ached, and he spent most of his time in bed.
"The smell of food made me nauseous," he recollects.
On March 4, a relative took him to the emergency department at NTFGH, where he was admitted.
"When I got there, the staff told me that they would safekeep my bag, wallet and cellphone for me," says Mr Tan, who was drifting in and out of consciousness and could not recall what happened after that.
That evening, a doctor phoned Mrs Tan after suspecting that her husband had the coronavirus and told her to come by for a swab test.
Mrs Tan was later advised to admit herself into the hospital, and she immediately packed her cellphone, charger and a water bottle before an ambulance arrived to pick her up. "I had only one set of clothes - the set I was wearing. It happened quite suddenly," says Mrs Tan, who had earlier gone out to dye her hair and visit the market.
On March 6, both their test results for the virus returned positive.
Mr Tan, who had a fever, was sent to the ICU on March 5 - not long after arriving at the emergency department of NTFGH.
His wife, who was initially asymptomatic, started running a fever two days into admission. She was later transferred to the ICU on March 14, after her condition deteriorated with worsening breathlessness.
Both were in a bad shape when they arrived at the ICU, said members of the critical care team. What they had was acute respiratory distress syndrome, a severe lung condition and a common cause of death in seriously ill Covid-19 cases.
The Tans had entered with alarmingly low oxygen levels in their blood, says Dr Damian Bruce-Hickman, a resident physician at NTFGH.
When they were transferred to the ICU, breathing tubes connected to ventilators were needed to pump enough oxygen into their fragile lungs.
For the next few days, both remained unconscious.
Doctors and nurses, in their cumbersome personal protective equipment, also had to flip the patients face down - in a fairly common intervention known as proning - to boost their oxygen levels.
Dr Bruce-Hickman says: "The second you need extra procedures to protect the lungs, you automatically have quite a high chance of mortality."
When they woke up, the Tans appeared confused and disorientated. At times, they were agitated and did not know where they were.
Because of their weak lungs, it took several phases to slowly reduce the amount of oxygen support and doses of sedative drugs they were on.
Mr Tan ended up with a tracheostomy - an incision made in the windpipe to help him breathe - on March 19.
"I thought I would die," he admits. "I couldn't talk due to the tracheostomy. I wasn't allowed to drink and was fed through a tube."
For days, he hallucinated and saw images that looked like viruses on the ceiling of his room. "I felt like I was in a dream," he adds.
All he could recall then were brief and hazy encounters of nurses asking him how he was feeling.
For the next few days, both remained unconscious.
Doctors and nurses, in their cumbersome personal protective equipment, also had to flip the patients face down - in a fairly common intervention known as proning - to boost their oxygen levels.
Dr Bruce-Hickman says: "The second you need extra procedures to protect the lungs, you automatically have quite a high chance of mortality."
When they woke up, the Tans appeared confused and disorientated. At times, they were agitated and did not know where they were.
Because of their weak lungs, it took several phases to slowly reduce the amount of oxygen support and doses of sedative drugs they were on.
Mr Tan ended up with a tracheostomy - an incision made in the windpipe to help him breathe - on March 19.
"I thought I would die," he admits. "I couldn't talk due to the tracheostomy. I wasn't allowed to drink and was fed through a tube."
For days, he hallucinated and saw images that looked like viruses on the ceiling of his room. "I felt like I was in a dream," he adds.
All he could recall then were brief and hazy encounters of nurses asking him how he was feeling.
