夢の扉: 5th April 2009 - My Birthday Celebration

I woke up early Sunday morning, not knowing that today would be one of the best days of my life. It was my birthday the day before (4th April) but tradition requires that I join my family for ChengBeng, so my birthday celebration was postponed to the next day.

As usual, I boarded the ferry over to the mainland, alone this time, as CY had to join his family for ChengBeng. It took them a while to come pick me up as it turns out they got lost on the way to the jetty. No matter, I needed some fresh air to wake myself up and the sea air pretty much did the trick.

For some strange reason, we found ourselves in front of Pacific instead of Sunway, which is where we were headed. A few more lost and confused moments later, WenC finally managed to drive us to the intended shopping mall.

We bought tickets to Shinjuku Incident and were stopped by the ticket-collector to check if we were indeed old enough to watch this movie. Unfortunately, Ying wasn't and we got into a tiny pickle where the ticket-collector kept scolding us with an unnecessarily loud voice. Oh well, we got in anyways in the end.

We found out why it was rated for 18+. The movie was incredibly violent and had people's face being slashed and hands being chopped off. Well, it was pretty much expected as it was a movie about yakuza: notorious Japanese organised crime-gangs.

2 hours of violence and confusing plotlines later, we went to pick XinMay up at her house and headed for a nice cozy little place called Sunday's Café. And here's where it gets fun.

They made me open the small gift they gave me when they picked me up from the jetty. I wanted to open it at home but there were 3 girls and only one me. Many jumbled up illogical reasoning from them later, I gave up and started to unfold the paper wrappings.

I unwrapped. And unwrapped. And unwrapped. And unwrapped. This thing was wrapped beneath layers and layers of newspaper! I was getting mildly frustrated and a little suspicious. They told me it was a Jack-in-the-box. A trick. Yeah, right!

Countless layers of newspaper later, I came upon a small box which contained a small plushie of some weird black thing with a suction-cup thingy for you to hang on walls and one of those things you hang on mobile phones. I was like, okaaaaaaaaaaaaay ... It wasn't that I didn't like it. I did! I just found it weird that WenC deliberately wrapped it under so many layers of newspaper. Hmmmm ... something didn't feel right ...

And my hunch was right. The instant we finished munching on the toast we ordered May and Ying suddenly said they were still hungry and wanted to order something else. They scribbled something on the order form and showed it to a waitress, who then brought over a huge box with a ribbon tied neatly on top. At first my mind went blank and wondered what this is. And it hit me the next moment: this was for me!

I was speechless. What a surprise! No one's ever done this for me before and I didn't know how to express my feelings then. I was so touched that I could cry right there on the spot if it wasn't for my feeling shocked and surprised. The massive gift-box contained an assortment of items which ranged from plush-toys to T-shirts. The plushies, key-chains and other matter of collectibles had a similar theme: they were either in black or in white or both and most of them featured the skeletal character Jack from The Night Before Christmas.

After paying for our orders (which, to my annoyance, they did) we decided to go to Ying's place for some singing. Karaoke time! The karaoke room in Ying's house was a cute and cozy little in-between room upstairs. It's an in-between room because it's in between the upstairs hallway and the master bedroom.

We spent pretty much the rest of the day in that tiny little room singing whatever songs we find, which is a lot. It'd take us like 5 years to finish listening to every song they have. Non-stop. It was a really nice place to just sit, relax and sing so Ying, can we visit again sometime? XD

We went out for dinner, which was pretty uneventful except that I finally got to pay for something that day. WenC drove me back to the jetty so I can catch a ferry home. Heading home, I carried the huge boxful of gifts and an even bigger smile on my face, which stuck there until I went to sleep that night.

Thanks, girls, for everything ... It was by far the best birthday I've ever had ... *Sniff* :')