Happy Belated Birthday Hamish!

Yesterday was actually Hamish's birthday, but because I was working all day and Aonghas had to work in the evening, we didn't get a chance to celebrate it. Usually our family goes out for dinner to celebrate.

We decided to go out for dinner tonight, since Aonghas has finished his uni job for the year which means he didn't have to work tonight. We were originally going to pick Hamish up from work, then go our favourite Chinese restaurant in Mt Albert, but we were having trouble getting in touch with Hamish. He's been having problems with his phone lately with the battery dying prematurely.

We only just managed to spot him waiting outside his work and picked him up, but by then it was quite late, so we changed our plans and went back to Carls Jr out west for dinner.

This would be the first time our dad had gone to Carls Jr! The burger I ordered was MASSIVE! I was definitely full afterwards!

Anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAMISH!

(http://youtu.be/7PUK2SObfzI)

Happy (Early) Birthday Steven!

Tonight after uni my brothers joined some of the older guys from our church youth group for dinner at Hak Ka Hut Restaurant in Albany to celebrate Stephen's upcoming birthday!

We had a table at the back of the restaurant. Stephen's mum and sister were the only girls at the table. They did all the ordering, but that was fine because the food was quite nice!

We had some beans, fried to-fu, beef, fish...I'll let the photos do the talking!

Once we had finished eating, it was time to bring out the cake!

After all of us took heaps of photos of the cake, it was time to sing Happy Birthday to Stephen, and eat the cake! Let me tell you, it tasted good!

Stephen, Wei and Cham soon had to leave for a movie while the rest of us headed home. I have a presentation to prepare for tomorrow morning which I haven't...started....

Happy birthday once again, Stephen and thanks for inviting us to dinner!

Birthday Bowling

I've finally turned 24!

I've grown to dislike birthdays, as it just serves as a reminder that I'm only getting old. Besides, nothing fun usually happens on birthdays anyway! This year though I had quite a good birthday.

It started off with two of my best high school friends, Hyun and Joon having a video chat with me just before and carrying on past midnight. It was about 5am over there in New York, so they were up just to chat to me. It was really cool, as I haven't talked to them in a long time, and I haven't actually video chatted to them since they left NZ over six years ago!

What was just as cool was that they told me they had received the Christmas presents I had posted them several weeks ago - All Blacks ties (as a reminder of NZ)! I was starting to worry a little bit as no one had received anything I had posted overseas to them!

I was also given a birthday card by Eva on Sunday that I had been saving till my birthday to open, so I decided to open and read it just after midnight (apparently I was meant to read it the day before though!). It was really nice of her! She had made it herself, and inside she wrote quite a long and heartfelt message! Thank you so much Eva!

It was finally time to open the present Grace had given me on Saturday too. It turned out to be a shoulder bag! That was something I've been meaning to buy myself for a while, since the one I currently have is starting to fall apart after two years of use! Thank you so much Grace!

It really put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. Later that afternoon I went with my brothers and Grace to the city to go bowling at the new Metro Lanes (in the Metro building), using some one-day vouchers. The place just opened recently, so it was worth a try!

It was quite different to the older bowling alleys we're used to. The lanes are split, with a few here and there. I guess that's due to a lack of space.

It looked as though Aonghas was going to run away with the highest score, with Grace coming a close second. That was impressive too, considering how Grace has played very little bowling! I was languishing in third, but after getting a spare in the last bowl, I was given an extra bowl and was unlucky to come second just by ONE pin!

The game only lasted about 40 minutes which was not too bad!

We were originally going to check out that Japanese pop art exhibition but after finally getting mobile internet to work, we realised the gallery is closed on Mondays! I guess it was straight onto lunch then!

We were about to go to Burger King, but at the last minute decided to go to Wendy's instead. That continues a tradition we have of going to Wendy's on birthdays.

We all ordered one of those $5 combos, and got a free frosty shake through the Wendy's app! (If you have an iPhone or Android, download the app and use it!).

With a drink, ice-cream AND a frosty, we were all quite full after that! 

It was time to walk back to the car though, as we only had paid for parking for two hours. Along the way we discovered a nice little Christian bookstore, and some really good lady just drumming on the footpath!

I actually enjoyed my birthday this time! Thanks Aonghas for paying too! :P

What I have come to realise is that rather than dread becoming another year older, I should be thankful I've been able to live another year, and I am truly grateful for that!

I've come to realise that I have many awesome and loving friends. I am truly grateful to have them in my lives, and I hope I've done my best to be there for them and be the best friend I can be!

I also love my family and would have no other family, despite our numerous flaws and quirks!

So once again, thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!

More specifically, thanks Grace, Joe, Wei, Kaytee, Bettina, James, Phillip, Andrew, Eva, Andy, Cham, Suzy, Sue, Julie H, Julie K, Jacky, Uncle John, Ian, Stella, Mimi, Amelia, Jane, Jennifer W, Diane, Megan, Aunty Grace, Elizabeth, Antonio, Nami, Evelyn, Ashleigh, Kacey, Jonathan S, Korina, Ivy, Ray, Arina, Nadine, Anateira, Anthony, Irene, Tina, Joon, Hyun, Janice, Angel, Neha, Szelin, Dillon, Kunsala, Julie, Emily, Michael T, Mary, Lindsey, James Z, Sonja, Xin-Yan, Mitali, Alex W, Evan, Sera, Ben, Joshua, Calvin, Daniel W, George, Monica, Mandy V, Bobby, Zippo, Sheena, Miji, Ada, Aula, Tyler, Cleo, Peter, Scholastica, Ben V, Fiona, Shirley K, Toni, Tim, Alex, Chen, Steven P, Kimberley, Emily, Caylee, Harris, Martyn, Eujin, Hannah, Shameela, Banthoon, Jon, Kylie-Marie, Peter H, Belinda, Natalie, Winston, Dianne, Andrew B, Ting Ting, Sheridan, Cathie, Joy, Yerin, Zahir, Sebastian, Lunshen, Johnny, Aone, Megan J, Carmen, Anisha, Yan Yan, Graeme, Konny, Ellyce, Karen, Vanessa, Joylynn, Angie, Jenny, Rebecca, Amy and Cookie Bear for your birthday wishes!

(Let me know if I've missed you!)

(http://youtu.be/t-PFZ6_UZDo)

Bloated Birthday Meal

This afternoon our family went to our favourite (cheap) buffet restaurant in the city, Imperial Garden. It's all-you-can-eat dim sum in the weekends! My dad and Aonghas will be working on Monday night (my birthday..shhhhh) so we decided to have an early birthday lunch. All that really means is I don't have to pay my mum back. Woohoo!

When we got to the pay machine to pay for our car park, there was already a ticket sitting there, and it hadn't expired! We were originally just going to use that and save $8, but my dad was worried since there were security cameras around, so we did the honest thing. There happened to be two Australian 5c coins lying around too. What a test!

We had one-and-a-half hours to eat, so it was time to get started! I tried to restrain from eating the deep-fried food, as that fills me up fast. My strategy: dim sum, dim sum, DIM SUM. Oh, and then dessert.

Half way through, and I was pretty full! It was time for dessert! I could only manage a bowl of fruit salad and a few snacks. I had to smuggle the rest of the biscuits in a tissue and sneaked them to my mum under the table to look after for later!

We were pretty bloated after that lunch! Now we just had to make sure we didn't fall asleep during the Experiencing God programme we had to attend at church!

Happy Pension!

Happy 65th Birthday Dad!

Today my dad reached a huge milestone! Now he gets a Super Gold card!

Tonight we celebrated his 65th by having a family dinner at the our cousins' house. Not too many showed up because some of the relatives had other events to attend, but at least there were still quite a few! We also invited the Tans along.

We had these pizza vouchers we bought not too long ago on one of those one-day deal websites (ten vouchers to be precise) and we had to use them up by the end of the week, so we brought along three pizzas to the dinner!



Once again we all got really bloated at the dinner! There is always so much food and the dessert is so filling! There is even quite a bit left over!

The Tans gave our dad this cool hat that makes him look a little stylish for his age (he should try wear it around the place!).

We waited till we got home to give him our present - an iPad! Our old computer is always dying on him and he's always been talking about the iPad and what it can do, so I thought maybe we should get him one!

Enjoy, dad!

Happy 50th, Pastor!

It is the pastor's 50th birthday this coming Wednesday, so his wife and daughter put together a bit of a surprise birthday for him after church today. 

He was obviously kept out of the loop, or at didn't show that he was aware of it! 

I was teaching the kids recorder, getting them ready to play the Happy Birthday song, when I got a call that everyone was waiting for us!

We went into the new classroom and people had already started singing! They let the kids play Happy Birthday for the pastor afterwards though, so that was nice!

One of the ladies from church had baked two cakes for the pastor so there was plenty to go around!

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!

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.

Freezing Time

I've got today off work which has come at a good time as it is Aonghas's 21st birthday party tomorrow night and there is a lot of work to do.

We did a bit of filming for Aonghas's birthday video today, and all I can say is it involves a Time Machine Freezer...

Celebrating Aonghas's 21st

Aonghas has finally hit the 21 mark, and and so we decided to celebrate like only we know how - have dinner together!

Originally we were thinking about going to the place in Mt Albert that we always go to, but Aonghas wanted to try somewhere different, so we went to this food court in the CBD.

There were so many different food stalls to choose from, all with different types of food - Malaysian, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indonesian and of course Chinese!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H7UJYPTqfo)

It took a while for all of us to choose what we wanted, but in the end we all made our own decisions. My dad went Malaysian, Hamish had Thai, Aonghas chose Korean, my mum had Chinese and I ended up having Japanese, or Teriyaki Salmon Don to be more specific! 

Hamish struggled with his dish as it was quite spicy. He went back to ask for a cup of water, and an on-looker commented that he looked like he was struggling!

My dish tasted quite nice and there weren't any bones in my salmon! I had a hard time asking the lady before paying if there were any bones. She would just smile and say it was good. I don't think she understood me!

After dinner we decided to walk down Queen Street to Smith and Caughey's to check out the Christmas display with the moving dolls. 

We got side-tracked by this new Japanese store along the way, that was still open at 9.30pm at night! It was sort of underground as we had to go down the stairs to check it out. 

While we were there I skyped with Amy who was at the airport, about to depart for China! I was amazed at how well that went, considering I was using mobile internet and haven't had the best experience in the past.

After almost half an hour of wandering around the store, then waiting for our mum to wander around the store looking at stuff, we finally left the store and made our way to Smith and Caughey's.

I always like these displays they put up in their shop windows each year. They must spend quite a bit on them, but it really does get you into the Christmas spirit!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oovPK8YkIbE)

So hopefully Aonghas had a good birthday and a true start to adulthood. The celebration isn't over though. He'll probably have a proper celebration a little later on!

Spicy Birthday Dinner

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAMISH!

We decided to go to the restaurant in Mt Albert we regularly go to (the same one we went to just a few days ago on Sunday night!) to celebrate Hamish's 25th birthday after work.

We did visit Harvey Norman (or Andrew Norman as my dad likes to call it) to check out their special sale before we went though. Some salesman was trying to sell us an outdated laptop. What was worse was that it was a display model!

As he was talking, I started looking at the tablets and went to pick one up when I set the alarm off! That was embarrassing...

We went off to the small restaurant in Mt Albert. Our mum was a little more relaxed about what we chose, so we chose some fried squid and chicken. What we didn't pay enough attention to was the word SPICY that was in front of it on the menu! I was expecting mild, not super mild! Then again, I have a really low tolerance for spicy foods.

That was OK though, the food was still good and made us full!

Boy Hamish you're getting old!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjmTG0g8feI)

Cake Does the Trick

Tomorrow is the pharmacist manager at our pharmacy Aula's birthday, so the rest of us thought we'd surprise her with a birthday cake! Jenny, one of the pharmacy technicians bought a cake and we all shared the cost.

I think it made our pharmacist happy, because she offered to buy me a coffee or hot chocolate in the morning! 

It made for a very easy-going day at work! 

Happy Birthday Aula for tomorrow!

Joyboy's Birthday

We had church service today and it was Joylynn's birthday, so I rushed to buy a cake for her in the morning before the service (OK well maybe just as it started!) and then returned to church. Fortunately I didn't miss too much.

When I got there though the hall was full and a certain someone was supposed to reserve a seat for me but didn't, so I ended up sitting by myself!

 After service though we found Joylynn and were about to surprise her with the cake, but her dad (who's our church's pastor as well!) had also brought little cupcakes for her too! It looks like she was going to have a big feed today!

Singing Birthday

 It was Shrikkanth's birthday today and he was having a 22nd birthday party to make up for not having a 21st birthday party last year. By golly he's young! Most of us have already turned 22 and he's only turning 22 now!

Anyway, I had to teach music in the morning so I couldn't make it till the afternoon. When I got there, his friends were all in the lounge playing Singstar. It's been a long time since I last went to his house. I think the last time was way back in year nine in 2002, when a group of us had to create a short film about something to do with Ancient China. I wish we still had a copy of that!

While I recognised a few people's faces, I only really knew Grainam (intermediate school friend) and Sarena (intermediate-high school friend). Apparently the other high school friends had been and gone already!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoQMiXLWqp0)

There was still some food left so I had a bit to eat while catching up with Grainam and watching the singing going on.

As it got later, people started to leave until there were just a few of us left. We went into Shrikkanth's room to watch a few funny Youtube videos before it was time for me to go too.

Happy Birthday Shrikkanth!

Careers and Birthdays

I took a day off work (music teaching) today as Aonghas and I had a compulsory music rehearsal I had to attend over at Mt Smart Stadium (it's a secret right now!) which meant neither of us could teach. Fortunately the sun was out...maybe it came out a bit too much as I had to cover myself in sunblock to avoid getting burnt!

The rehearsal finished by midday which allowed Aonghas and I to make a trip back to the city to check out the University of Auckland Courses and Careers Day. We parked all the way down Symonds Street, which meant it was quite a walk to the university. 

When we got there, I was surprised that there wasn't much going on in the Information Commons! It turned out that most of the displays and stands were over at the business and engineering buildings.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJJJfD3JrLw)

The business school had all their stands/displays at the ground level and I came across my good friend Alice who I haven't talked to in quite a while! It turns out she switched to 2degrees! No wonder I hardly receive txts from her these days! She was supposed to be providing advice to prospective students but I sorta hogged her for a little while, just to catch up with her and get a bit of business advice!

We then went downstairs so I could visit the pharmacy stand and ask about post-grad, which I'm considering doing next year. I think most of the students there were first or second year students with one third year student who said she recognised me as the one who works at the university pharmacy! Busted!! 

They weren't able to help me out so I went over to the School of Graduate Studies stand where some people gave me some advice. I also checked out the law school and education faculty stands as well. It looks like I could study primary/intermediate school teaching if I want to next year (if I get accepted of course).

We were running out of time and Aonghas wanted to check out the engineering school. I have to say I was quite impressed with some of the projects on display - there was a mechanical fish, a few robots, a popcorn machine and a candy floss machine apparently powered by solar energy! I managed to get some popcorn and candy floss to eat which was a bonus!

We caught up with Grace and came across Jenny who was manning the Biomedical Engineering stall! We then went by the Gamja stall and bought some Gamja so Aonghas could try it out. We then had a little stroll down Queen Street, trying to find Andrew and Ben, as it was Andrew's 18th birthday today! He told us he was having a haircut, but by the time we got to the barber's he was gone.

We heard he was playing pool with his brother and mum, so on our way there we went to Wendy's to busy some food and sat in Aotea Square to eat before I tried looking for a cake to buy for him.

We finally caught up to them at the pool place and gave Andrew the cake which I hope he enjoyed! We watched him play pool for a little while before it was time to go!