Cooking Calamari

Tonight we finally cooked the calamari the pharmacist at my work bought me for my birthday. It was quite easy to cook/fry, and it tasted quite good!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQaD5TKnUTE)

Calamari for Calum!

Today the pharmacist at my work gave me a birthday present - Calamari!

That's her nickname for me, and because I told her I had never tried it before, she had bought a box of it for me! When I got to work, she grabbed it out of the freezer to show me!

Thanks so much Aula!

Toni Turning Chinese

Tonight after work I met up with my high school friend Toni and a few others to farewell her, as she is leaving New Zealand for China next Monday to teach English over there!

I had some Burger King before I was going to meet them all at Shadows, the uni bar. As I was walking back up to uni though, I saw them walking down the road, and it turned out that Shadows was closed!

We all walked to some bar in Metro. When we got in and sat down, a staff member came over to tell us that they would be closing in 25 minutes! We would have to find somewhere else to go! There was only enough time for Evan, Toni's boyfriend and classmate, to have a game of pool!

Our third attempt to have a catch-up was at Father Ted's, an Irish pub. It was quite packed, probably because it was pub quiz night. We thought we might just enter a team! Our group was split into two, so all the high school friends of Toni's formed one group, along with a few others.

There were several sections to the pub quiz format. There was a section on movies/TV shows, sections 1 and 2 of Pot Luck, a page of logos we had to identify, and a section on music.

I have to admit I felt quite out of shape when hearing the questions and not being able to answer them! I was able to answer to a National Lampoon movie question, but for the rest of them we relied on Evan!

We got to the end of the questions, and handed them all in. We waited outside in the fresh air till an announcement was made on the winner of the pub quiz. We were expecting to come near the bottom, but as it turns out, we came second, only losing by ONE point! Maybe we should do this a bit more often!

Karaoke was just about to start, but it was getting late and I have work the next day, so I had to depart, but it was a good long-overdue catch-up with Toni and high school friends!

Hopefully Toni has a safe and life-changing experience in China! I'm sure she will gain so much out of it.

There goes another high school friend! Bye Toni!

Something Amazing

This morning at church I got my second birthday present from Gabrielle and Tim:

Thanks guys! I've got more bedtime reading to do now!

What Birthday?

So today was my birthday, but without Facebook's help you probably wouldn't have guessed it, seeing as I didn't do anything special at all to celebrate. Instead I spent the whole day helping Aonghas film a friend's friend's wedding. I guess that made it special in a way, in that I will always remember their wedding anniversary. I'll also remember my 23rd birthday as being at their wedding as well! I'll talk about the wedding in another post.

I admit I did start off my birthday at midnight feeling a little down, contemplating life and how old I've become without achieving much, etc. etc. By the end of the day after the wedding was over I was too tired to think about it!

Now time for the thank-you's! So thanks Harris, Mimi, Natalie, Kate, Jacky, Asal, Himesh, Angel, Ms Faaea-Semeatu, Ellyce, Kelvin, Amber, Nikki, Phillip, Irene, Scholastica, Megan, Adam, Ting Ting, Regina, Christine, Yoon, Rachel, Andrew, Anisha, Johnny, Caylee, Melissa, Ayesha, Edwin, Ji Eun, Julie H, Aula, Kaytee, Ashleigh, Xin-Yan, Megan J, Jane, Henry, Cathie, Arina, Julia, Esther, Larry, Karmun, Ruby, Zippo, Daniel, Richard, Ellen, Shen, Joylynn, Leo, Amanda, Yan Yan, Jade, Stella, Kevin, Julie K, Ruby, Joon, Jonathan, Paul H, Peter C, Cicily, Eddie, Sarena, Jenny, Yeeping, George, Amy, Tracy, Bettina, Dillon, Harjinder, Uncle John, Daisy, Kavi, Fraser, Jasmine, Amy C, Mubashra, Brit, Bliss, Tim S, Sonja, Maxine, Kunsala, Michael Z, , Emily, Sol, Hana, Shameela, Ruth, Dora, Grainam, Stephanie, Tyler, Steven P, Kathleen, Zahir, Winston, Joe, Grace, Sirianne, Timothy S, Michael Y, Hyun, Hannah S, Korina, Leonie, Nadine B, Wei, Cleo, Kassandra and Bronz for the birthday wishes on Facebook.

Thanks Alice and Cookie Bear for the birthday emails! It was really nice to get an email from Alice even while she's all the way in Australia! I ought to reply very soon!

Thanks too to Alex S, Antonia, Grace, Diane, Rebecca, Chen and Andrew for the birthday texts as well! Sadly my phone just had to start malfunctioning on my birthday, and I started to realise I wasn't receiving all the texts people were sending me! I'm in the process of sorting that out, so if you texted me and I haven't thanked you, it's probably because I didn't receive it :(

Anyway, without all the birthday wishes, my day would've been like any other, so thanks for them and for acknowledging my existence ;)

Hopefully I will have a chance to celebrate my birthday at least with the family sometime in the future.