BD Celebration for Andy

Nemo helped to organise a birthday bash for Andy. Knowing that Andy prefers a small BD celebration (he said he is paiseh with too many people celebrating with him), we kept the birthday bash *small* (well, 11 isn't really a small number I would say! but what to do? Andy is just wayyy tooo popular for people to pass up the chance to celebrate with him :P)

Andy has been a superb friend to all of us in sgrunners. Ever since he joined us, he has brought along with him lots of laughter and fun. He is someone who will go all out to help his friends, he will readily serve you food, drinks and make sure that you are ok. When I was pai kar and unable to run, Andy was the one that kept me company (run/walk with me at MY pace) without a single complaint! His gregarious but yet warm and friendly nature warms us to him almost immediately. When I first met him at the W2E run, I didn't get a chance to talk to him much as he and Shibido were running wayyyy too fast with the first group, there was no way I could have caught up! But in subsequent runs (I think was at HSP run), I managed to talk to him and found out what an easy-going and friendly guy he is. We became buddies almost instantaneously and he is always game for any activities that sgrunners/we organised and he always asked to be included.

At 7pm, all of us (andy, teelee, cosmic, junie, nemo, roentgen, cfred, angelicawonders, shut, sv & myself) gathered at Swensons @ Crown Prince Hotel for the BD dinner. (Thanks to Nemo for making all the arrangements! Apparently Swensons does not allow booking after 5pm but with Nemo's good PR skills, he managed to get us a table - and even allowed us to bring our own cake! -__-" someone in the group had bought a cake in advance and hence we did not get our cake from Swensons. Question, why wouldn't Swensons allow booking after 5pm ? Isn't it counter intuitive ? Its normally after 5pm where the peak hour starts and they disallow booking. Why would booking be required in the first place before 5pm ?? Is the restaurant even crowded enough to warrant a booking before 5pm ? Unless of course if we are talking about booking the entire restaurant. Anyway, I digress)

SV and Nemo had separately made Andy a photoframe and BD card respectively. As many of us had not signed the cards, we had to stealthily do so in the presence of Andy. With our very limited acting skills, we performed several acts just to distract Andy. From the "nemo-being-angry-with-sv" skit to Roentgen-going-to-toilet-to-sign-cards to me dragging Andy to go shopping with me. Of course, our acts were too amateurish and could hardly fool Andy, but kind Andy played along just to not make us feel bad about ourselves (ok, there goes our career switch to actors/actresses hehe).

After our dinner, Nemo cued for the cake to be brought out. When the cake was presented, Nemo played the superman theme song and presented him with his birthday present - A Superman T-shirt & Cap. An apt gift because we consider him our SuperFriend. :) I could tell Andy was soooo embarrassed by the attention. haha

We later proceeded to the Starbucks beside Swensons where Andy insisted on treating us to drinks. We squeezed ourselves into several couches in the corner of Starbucks and just had fun chit chatting and teasing one another. Central to the teasing was the "brokeback relationship" among those guys (the gals are all pretty decent people, we don't do brokeback ok. But we are all very kind and understanding angels, so we have no problems with our friends being in brokeback r/s *LOL*) present. I am refraining from naming anyone here but one hint is the fish & the one that wears green. Green ? Why green ? Who wears greeen ? Not out of choice but out of obligation ? Go figure. Hehe

We finally called it a day at 10+ and headed home.

Great dinner with great friends! Happy Birthday once again, our SuperFriend Andy!

Side note: As I earlier mentioned, I dragged Andy to go shopping with me across the road at Meritus Mandarin. First stop was Braun Buffel, couldn't find a wallet that I like. Quite disappointed with their design. Been looking at their ranges for wat, almost a year now, and none of their design attracted me. Sigh ... think i will have to change the brand of my wallet liao, but I like this gu brand leh ... any suggestions of what other brand I can look at ? (eh, dun suggest those brands like Prada or dunno wat hor, I can't afford.Will have to chop off my arms/legs in order to buy one - then I can't run liao. No thank you very muchie)

Next stop (just to buy time lah), I dragged Andy into The Link. Wah, their clothes are very NICE! I asked to see their cocktail dresses (got a salesgirl to explain to me what a cocktail dress is - a formal dress like an evening gown, only shorter. Ok, so confirm my suspicion that the tail of the dress doesn't involve a certain animal). I managed to see one very simple black flair knee length dress. Its adorable and definitely able to hide all my flaws, I asked the price and heard her say "6" ... so I tot to myself (wah lau, $600++ for this dress?!?!), then my eyes almost popped out when i realised it was a 4 figure sum she uttered!!! Had to scoop my eyeballs off the floor and quickly left the place. This explains why my eyes weren't that focus the entire night, coz never fix them back into my eyesockets correctly :P

Will have to hunt for a decent, affordable cocktail dress. Wish me luck!