Continuing on with my coverage of the birthdays in the month of Oct/Nov..lol. As mentioned in my earlier post, Mike's birthday was on the 27th of Oct, which was a Monday. It was also Deepavali and a public holiday for us in Selangor. YAY! To maximise our time, he decided to have his celebration on Sunday night instead. Being Mike, he chose to do it at Neway Karaoke at 1Utama and invited about 10 of us. Representing Swinburne (bsides the bday boy) was myself, Kwang Houg, Aileen and KC who was here for the long weekend. He'd also invited quite a few of his CHMNS1 friends. Even 1 of his friends working in SG was in KL for the weekend, which was good for him. So it was nice to be able to meet some new ppl from Kch working in KL. But i can honestly say we didn't have much time to talk. Y? Bcoz the package included buffet dinner!! We were all busy stuffing ourselves, there was a lot of yummy food to choose from. So Mike was busy choosing his songs while we chose the food. Haha.
Personally, I liked the appetizers more than the mains but the good thing was, if you keep coming down (they have like 2 flrs of rooms and we were upstairs), once a dish is finished, they'd replace it with a new one, usually of a different type. So there's really a lot to choose from! There was sushi, salads, seafood like mussels, prawns, crab, clams, Japanese noodles (where u can choose the style and ingredients), diff styles of chicken, fish, beef, lamb, vegetables etc. For dessert, there were fruits, jellies, puddings, cakes, pastries and an ice-cream bar! Oh my, I could just go on and on about the food. Basically, we were all just going in and out of the room with dishes of food. If we were lazy or accident-prone, we could also get the waiters to bring up our trays for us! Talk about service, ahah. Heck, if you felt cold, you could even borrow scarves from them!
But one thing about this type of karaokes, they make it compulsory for the snacks, which tend to be extremely over-priced. At least for us, we had 2 drinks each. Anyway, on to the main activity, singing! Each one of us had our own favourite singers and styles, so it was kinda like..Battle of the Stars, ahah. Mike's obviously was Jay, mine was Xiao Zhu, KC's was Lee Hom and there were quite a few songs from JJ, Jolin, AMei and more. ANd yes I have improved, coz I can finally rap Xiao Zhu's part for his song 'Lian Ai Da Ren'. Haha, thanks to lots and lots of practice b4hand. But Mike wasnt there to see, so no judge of my improvement :P I guess the other ppl thought I'm strange..coz i sing duet songs on my own!
Bday boy with KC and Aileen
We sang till almost 12 then Mike rang down for his bday package. Hahaha, the bday boy himself had to arrange for it, so kolien. He was given a free cake and bottle of 'champagne' (sparkling juice la). We had to wait quite awhile for it, so he pretended to cry like he was sooo upset. DRama king la him. Of coz when it finally came, we sang him the bday song in a few diff languages, which is probably a 1st for him. Then it was presents time! The Swinburne group got him an Arsenal casual tee, which he immediately wore the next day. I also got him the Friends complete DVD set (pirated arr..) when I was in Vietnam a few mths ago. He got quite a few presents, you can check out his blog for more details.
Me and Kwang Houg with his present from the Swinburne group (The couple already left ma)
However, unfortunately for us, we were asked to settle the bill and go at around 12.30 coz there were ppl outside waiting to use the room. The package was from 7.30pm to 12.30am, but if there was no1 waiting, we could actually use it till closing time, around 3-4am. But since the next day was a public holiday, guess every1 had the same idea as us! And there were still 6 drinks we hadnt claimed, so we went home with at least 1 or 2 bottles of Kampai, ahah! I think I was rather disappointed that we couldnt sing till early morning, coz it would have been a 1st and hey, I'd been practicing :P Mayb next time ya...hehe. But I really had fun singing, eating and laughing. It was a good celebration, I think MIke definitely enjoyed it with all his friends joining him :D
1st November 2008
Talk about spontaneity and last-minute. I'd actually sent out Captain's present out to Johor earlier b4 my work trip to Penang when he texted me late on Halloween nite. Then he suddenly said that I should clean my apartment so that when he arrives it's clean. I thought he was just joking as usual but then he got Chee Fui to confirm with me b4 I could finally believe him. Then it was like..all out frenzy, coz the apartment was a little dusty. And being my mum's daughter, that cannot do! Started out cleaning my bathroom, then my room. Coz it was already almost 1, i was like...cannot..must continue tomorrow. So woke up early to clean the rest of the place and waited for them to arrive. And they know how to drive to KL, but then on, no clue. Somehow they managed to arrive someplace near my office so at least i could retrieve them n lead them back to my place.
After dropping their stuff and their car at my place, it was off to Ikea! Hmm, what isit with ppl from Kch and Ikea. Honestly, I've been there like so many times everytime some1 comes to KL. Haha, oh well, part of being the tour guide. Of coz we stopped for food 1st coz it was 3pm and none of us had eaten lunch yet! And i hadnt had a proper meal in 24 hrs, coz i spent most of it sleeping! Hahah. FOllowed them around Ikea trying out all the diff furniture, showed them the Curve's weekend flea market, Cineleisure and then it was off to 1Utama for some serious clothes shopping. Honestly, they're better shoppers than me i think. Kinda fun in a sense, coz they're like girls, can shop together with me. It was dinner time so we went for Vietnam Kitchen and it was the Captain's treat. Since it was his bday hehe. Ooo the golden mango prawn roll was yummy but i think all of us burned our tongues on it coz it was just fresh out of the wok.
Went back to my place where we all freshened up and then we went back to the Curve to check out Scarlet with my bro in tow. After all, its the Captain's bday, we must have alcohol! Hahah. We were early enough to snag a table at the side, but it was starting to get quite crowded. We had Glenmorangie single-malt as per my bro's recommendation, and it was pretty nice with the mixers. A little diff from Jack Daniels and Chivas. At 1st the music was just so-so, some house/r&b that we didn't quite recognize. The good thing about Scarlet was that 1 side of it is open windows/balconies so there was more ventilation, not to mention a nice view. As the night went on, the music got more retro and mixed. From Rihanna's Umbrella, they could go to 'oldies' such as Cranberrie's Zombie, Linkin Park's In the End, Bon Jovi's It's my Life and even....YMCA. Oh my. Hahha, it really made us feel old coz we knew the songs and we teased Captain that it was coz its his bday. It was kinda fun too, coz every1 in the club was just singing along loudly.
We left around 1am coz Chee Fui was falling asleep at the table (he hadnt slept for 24 hrs!!) and the rest of us had little sleep too, with husky voices due to all that singing. So I had 3 'salted fishes' sprawled out in my living room, coz KC was back in KL to get his car. KC was smarter tho, he went to sleep early and staked out a 'safe' position at the side. When my bro came in from watching football, he had to navigate his way around what little space there was with his handphone light and he nearly stepped on the Captain who was in the middle of the group. Since they were all exhausted, I let Chee Fui sleep till 12 noon b4 we woke him up to go for lunch. It was a little late for the dimsum place I had in mind, so we went straight for Mid Valley in 2 cars (so they could drive straight back after that).
Once again, on my bro's recommendation, we went for Mdm Kwan's for lunch. And dammit, he has expensive taste la! Since i promised i'd pay for dimsum breakfast, I paid for the lunch instead and ouch...it was RM100 for the 4 of us..-_- After that, we walked around, checked out the shops and showed them The Gardens, where it was just TOOO expensive for us to buy anything. We are all gadget freaks so we went from Sony to Nokia and so on to see the phones/laptops. My bro showed them the incredibly expensive jeans shop, with all the Evisu, True Religion jeans. Imagine, 1 pair is RM1k minimum! Crazy rite?
But soon, it was time for them to start the drive back to Johor and we said our goodbyes. Of coz they're welcome to come back and stay with us (with more advance notice pls!). Basically I am like the 'hotel' for my Kch friends who come to KL, ahah! But yeah, I had a good weekend too, though it was an expensive one. I think they found it more expensive though, what with their shopping. Anyway, it was a lot of fun, joking around, teasing/arguing, with the Captain getting hit a lot of coz. Chee Fui could just shake his head at how childish we were in public. But that is SOP - Standard Operating Procedure for us. Oh, no pics coz we forgot to take any, and lazy too! Heh. Till the next time then!
