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09/14/2007: "Singapore Birthday Celebrations!"
mood: Loved
I'm so incredibly happy and touched to have such wonderful friends.
Remember how I was moaning previously about the fact that I wouldn't be able to celebrate my 21st birthday in Singapore, since I'll be back in Nottingham during that time? Well, I've had two absolutely wonderful be-early birthday surprises that really did catch me by surprise and which left me feeling so blessed and lucky to have friends who care enough to do such things for me.
The first surprise happened last Friday, when I was planning to have a cookout with SY, K and S at my house, since we hadn't done that in awhile. S also invited Y aka Fish along, which I learnt about only because S accidentally sent an sms meant for him to me the day before. *tsks at S's carelessness*
After a fun day shopping with SY and K in which we bought S's belated birthday present, and after buying all our ingredients (on the menu was seafood tom yum soup, oyster sauce broccoli and sausages with cheese cubes for hors d'oeuvres), we then headed back to my house. On the way there, I mentioned that S might already at my house since we had taken quite awhile to buy all our stuff, and SY replied that she probably hadn't since S had said she would message her before she reached my house. To which I was quite surprised since it would have meant that S would have been waiting for Fish for quite awhile - it was already dark and she was supposed to meet him at the bus stop. (Turns out she did end up waiting for him for half an hour, and boy did she not let him forget that for the whole night. :p)
When I stepped into the house, I actually smelt something burning and I wondered for a moment if someone was burning candles in the house. It didn't seem such a big deal to me though, so I said nothing. Even when my maid asked us to go into the house by the back entrance, I suspected nothing since we were carrying groceries and normally in my family we go in by the back entrance if we have stuff to put down in the kitchen.
So after we had dumped the groceries in the kitchen and our bags in my room, Kaori mentioned that she wanted to check out my patio and as she steered me there I suddenly heard voices. But I STILL didn't suspect anything - instead I thought that my sis might have invited some of her friends over! ^_^;; So of course I was really surprised (in a good way) when I stepped out to the patio and saw a birthday cake with lit candles and an adorable pink Elmo balloon tied to a chair. Turned out they'd been planning that from the start and I hadn't suspected a thing! We then spent a really fun evening playing cranium, my first time trying that game out - and even though my group had three people altogther as opposed to the other group of just SY and K, we ended up losing. :p Cranium's really fun though, it's definitely a great game to play at small parties. :D
As for surprise number two, it happened today, which means that I've had my birthday surprises on two fridays in a row. :p
Yesterday I happened to meet A online on MSN, and as we chatted a bit I mentioned that I was going out on Friday to look for birthday presents for two of my Notts friends. He remarked that it was a coincidence since he had been planning to go to the place I was going to, and so then we planned to meet up for lunch and then go shopping.
We ended up going to this place called M(i?)a Maison, which was an odd Japanese-French fusion restaurant - the food definitely seemed like the Japanese idea of what French food should be/is like. :p The food was ok, but I wasn't that hungry since I had eaten a late breakfast and so I ended up not really eating much of it. ^_^;; A said he found out about that place from a friend of his who has been eating there regularly for literally years -
After the lunch, we then headed off to Sunshine Plaza, which is a shopping complex that houses quite a few shops selling anime and manga related merchandise. (Though there aren't actually a lot of shops there and many of the other shops are new age type shops selling all sorts of crystals and buddhist related things. ^_^;;) After taking quite a while to check out some of the shops, I settled on Ga Mok's present but I still couldn't figure out what to get for Dee Mok. In the meantime, I had come across some Tales of the Abyss figurines which I really liked, and which I had pointed out to A. Since I'm not the type of person to buy these things for myself (usually, anyway), I wasn't planning on getting them for myself especially because I'm cheapskate. :p
So at the end when I had decided I was done shopping, I asked A if he was planning on buying anything, and he said yes. The conversation went something like this:
Me: Ok, I'm done! Are you going to get anything?
A: Yeah, I have my eye on something.
Me: Oh, ok. Do you want to go get it then?
A: Sure.
Me: So what are you getting?
A: ... You really don't know?
Me: No, I didn't really see you looking at anything in particular.
A: ... I'm getting your birthday present.
Me: 0_o @#$%^&*()^%$#@
Then ensued a sort of verbal tug-of-war of sorts, where I was pretty much all "A, you can't buy me those for my birthday! They're too expensive! And besides, I didn't even get you any birthday present and your birthday's over already and won't be here for a long time yet!" and he was all "No no, you can buy me a birthday present next year, we have to start giving presents from somewhere." We were literally just standing outside a shop and arguing about this. *laughs*
So yes, I ended up getting my Tales of the Abyss figurines! :D Needless to say, I was incredibly touched and happy, though I WAS really embarrassed at how I hadn't really realised that he was seriously going to buy me a present. In my defense though, unlike the other birthday surprise where I really suspected nothing at all, it DID cross my mind (when we were chatting on msn) that he might have been planning to get me a birthday present, since there were a few suspicious points such as how he asked when my birthday was, when I was leaving for Notts and then also refused to tell me how come he happened to be miraculously free when it's not the school hols for him yet, but I brushed that thought aside since we aren't actually that close, though as a general rule my ex-HC classmates all get along really well together. And well, don't you think it's rather "ego" to assume that people are going to buy birthday presents for you? Especially people you're not that close with. Or maybe I'm just being my usual self-deprecating self, I dunno. Whatever that case, I suppose it's that characteristic of mine that adds to my already slow and extremely gullible self. ^_^;;
So that wraps up another of my gigantic entries. And if you think this is the end of my birthday celebration ramblings, sorry to disappoint, but I'll be eventually blogging about the Nottingham side of the celebrations as well. Though as always with me, eventually will probably be a long time in coming. :p (As you can see from the date, this entry has been 3/4 finished for 2 months and I only JUST got round to finishing it. I really need to learn to be less verbose. :p)
EDIT: Added photos of the Tales of the Abyss figurines. The photos are kind of crappy since I didn't have time to take nicer ones.
