William Chong

Today Cheryl and I tried out Berkeley Cinema’s Circle Lounge, for half-price on everything!  Plush recliner seats, hot chocolates and pizzas and desserts served to our seat – all very exciting stuff.  The movie was pretty good – Harry Potter 5, and I’ll spoil it for you – Voldemort is back!  Oh no!  Did I reveal this information 4 years too late?  *shrugs* Also will probably get the final book on the 21st, Arron will be lining up for me whilst I’m teaching on that Saturday morning.

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It was so windy today that the awning area out the front of the restaurant was rattling and shuddering from gale-force winds.  Pretty grateful our power has stayed on so far.

Nathan you are pretty lucky in Samoa right now.  (He got married)  Oh, and some pics of Jared and Cheryl looking cool.  Both of them have now undergone a fantastic glasses upgrade!

Oh, Dad and Kim returned from their holiday in the summery conditions of Brisbane and the Gold Coast.  Exceedingly envious.  They got clear skies every single day.

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Last couple of days at work have also been pretty fun-filled.  On Friday I did a random chef’s shift, which gave me a good idea of how to do certain bits and pieces like our tapas menu, and a couple of entrees.  I’m very good with ovens and deep friers now, haha.

I’ve been really slacking off on the violin practice, to the point that I think my exam proficiency from practising before has gone back a whole month, it seems.  Perhaps it’s the runs and arpeggios at 11pm at night, but I should ideally be able to play at any time of day all my pieces well.  Urgh.

Anyways, stay at home if you are in Auckland.  Not worth driving in these stupid conditions.  See ya!

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Another 21st!  This time it was Linda’s, a good family friend I’ve known since college.  She chose NYNY to organise it, so it worked out pretty well: low-key, with tapas platters coming through reasonably-paced as well as an open bar tab.  The majority of it was cocktails, and non-alcoholic mixes – and there was even chunder from the birthday girl!  Always a sign of a 21st that went according to plan huh.

Working a couple of extra shifts during the holidays, but other than that no major hassles.  Finding the time to clean up about the house, make sure things are in order, practise violin, write songs, have a decent break in general.  Also got decent results this semester – 3 A’s and a B+, though I’m disappointed I didn’t do better with Chinese110 (could’ve gotten an A+!).  Here’s a picture of a red bean fish ice cream cake:

Hope you’re all having a good break!

Big party! Millions of people showed up. Well, almost.

Spent Friday and Saturday:

• setting up things like fairy lights, lanterns, oriental pizazz
• cleaning a really scungy chilly bin from its last outing
• setting up speakers and making sure they worked across two different rooms
• scanning heaps and heaps of baby photos for slideshows
• food prep (Tommy made Mantou, RB had her sushi etc)
• drinks prep (setting up a faux-bar)

At about 4pm we started experimenting with different feijoa vodka martini mixes, eventually settling on one that RB was happy with:

30ml 42 Below Feijoa Vodka
60ml feijoa juice

Shake with ice, strain into martini glass.
Add 30ml lemonade, garnish with feijoa slice.

Some cool things throughout the party proper:

• degrees of separation! Turns out Laurence’s friend Ray knows Sonny, and tall Michael knows Paul, and relatives of someone had various connections.
• The cake was fantastic – two-story heart-shaped, included about a 1/3 bottle of Cointreau orange liqueur in it
• Great outfits – RB’s and Rebecca’s seemed to have been done by the same Southeast Asian tailor
• Lots of food from Fong Mei! My favourite!
• All of RB’s fantastic artwork scattered across the walls.
• Seeing lots of familiar faces and having a decent time catching up!

Dubious points:

• Some people obviously came for the drinks, and then left without any decent farewell.
• Spiked vodka and grenadine fruit punch. Most of the Christian congregation left RB’s party red-faced (and not from embarrassment either!)
• In-house noise control.
• Who the hell gives someone a Striptease DVD as a birthday present?!

The only formalities came about from me asking people to share something about RB. Speeches were mostly short and simple, and focussed on RB’s positive attributes such as her intellect, artistic talent, loyalty and her onion-ness! (Shrek: “I’m like an onion.” Donkey: “You make people cry?” Shrek: “NO DONKEY. I have LAYERS.”)

Then they cut the cake, etc. Lots of people sang “Happy Birthday”. I’m glad you made it RB

Most people left quietly, without saying anything – even Laurence’s ride back to West Auckland left! Luckily a couple of us decided to hit town: RB, Laurence, Cheryl, Ray, Tommy, Colin and Marcy, May and Joseph. We were unfortunate enough to decide on The Lounge on High St – we hit it on a $5 cover charge night and a scratch-happy DJ trio, all who had unanimously decided that changing the song every 30 seconds was artistic merit (yeah right). Nevertheless, RB got free drinks from the bar and it all went wobbly-knees from there.

I think I slept at 4, which wasn’t too bad.

Good times!

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