William Chong

Korean plums. Hot bubble milk tea. Blogging at work. Life is a diaspora of edible things and credible thoughts.

On Wednesday I had the misfortune of rolling my ankle while running down a hill searching for the next control. I managed to still lose to Leo, but Jared and Kristy tried out o’teering for the first time, which I think they enjoyed.

Went to Alicia’s birthday bash at Sixth Sense - being sociable, catching up with other people. Rainbow decided she wouldn’t like to be a flight attendant now that she’s been unsuccessful twice. Logan’s at animation school, May’s in her job for the benefits, and Joel wore a half-cowboy hat.

Paperclip was good – just sat around and chatted with Sonny and Dennis. One of the things about working as a writer is that you’re in mostly solitary mode through the week, except for the odd meeting or chat. So scheduling time to see friends and family is still paramount.

My dad came and went this time round. It’s good that we’ve moved on from our previous misunderstandings about his not-so-new relationship with Jennifer, and in any case life just goes on. I think the struggle now is trying to fathom why my mother doesn’t burn in my heart as strongly as before, and whether that’s a good or a bad thing.

2 years on and look where everyone is.

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Kelly O’Connor from the Rational Response Squad once said in a TV debate, “I’d rather go to hell than worship a megalomaniacal tyrant God.”

The last I heard, He took the fall for us – is that so tyrannical?

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(No spoilers in this post, so you can rest easy)

Very hardcore people lining up in a queue that stretched all the way from the information desk in the middle of Borders Sylvia Park, through the glass doors and to the stairs leading up to Hoyts Cinemas. Insane.

Arron was queuing up for me though, so after teaching finished at 11, I made my way through and he had my book already. It’s a pretty good read: it feels like you’ve grown up with this bespectacled Wizard (by the way the last picture in that group above is of Henry dressed up as the Wizard Boy himself) through the seven books. The literary term is a bildungsroman story – a coming-of-age book where he finally discovers all the answers and all the loose ends get tied up.

If I had the time I’d read it again.

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Excellent 21st dinner at the Gengis Khan Mongolian BBQ Restaurant. Nick’s birthday went very well, good tributes and mentions of his attributes and qualities, and Jared is officially going out with Kristy it has transpired. Some very dangerously soppy texts in his inbox (not from me), lol.

First week back of uni has been relatively cruisy so far. Quite fond of my papers, even though 304 seems admittedly a touch flakey. Take care!

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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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With this set of pics, you get the behind-the-scenes look on the awesome birthday cake!  Then some pics from the “Asian Invasion” – very cool group photos.

All I can say is LOL at Yuen in the 2nd-to-last pic!  Looks like someone kicked him up his yup!

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Hello everyone!

There’s lots more pics coming up, I’m gettin’ them as they come through. At the moment they’re mostly from Nyonya… but what a fantastic meal! Thanks to everyone that made the effort, I was so glad to see heaps of costumes and faces! Thanks to Cheryl for the guestbook, decorations and balloons, and Hayden for swallowing up most of the helium! Hah, and Rainbow made that cake, check out the pictures. It was totally amazing, and used up a 2/3 cup of raspberry liqueur too, if anyone noticed. Thanks to Kim for decorating the photo album, and all of you photo-takers as well. Thanks to my parents, who put me where I am today. And also to God – when you’ve got the Alpha and the Omega on your side, you wonder how you could have survived without…!

Anyways, I’ll stop sounding like I won an Oscar or something.

So if you hadn’t guessed, it was my 21st party last night. After dinner at Nyonya, where we ran out of drink (sorry, was thinking further ahead) and we got a karaoke version of “Happy Birthday”, we went to NYNY. And it was dead! Pretty much, except for the random barfight outside. Man, it had to be the one night I *wasn’t* working that something interesting happens huh. Turns out a guy hit a woman for calling him racist names, and it all blew up from there.  It think Harley went over to mediate, but I remember it being quite a flashpoint so I’m glad he didn’t get hurt.  The manager of the place copped a good knock in the jaw though – ouch!

Some costuming highlights, check out the heaps of pics:

• Ben in his kendo outfit
• Arron with a Naruto headband
• Ninjas
• Matching Asian clothes from Raymond and Natasha
• Richard being the Asian doctor (they’re takin’ over med school, yes)
• Jared and Sarah being made in China
• Jared again – it takes guts to wear nappies to your friends’ 21st, lol….

Yes, I drank more than I have ever drunk before.

I don’t remember some bits between 1 and 2:30 in the morning, but Cheryl and Richard have been filling in on how funny I was being! ><”

Cheryl: “You try to become more responsible.”

Richard: “You were so wasted last night man!”

I think the consensus was that I acted like a little boy, which totally flies in the face of all the kind words people were saying about maturity and organisation and things like that. In any case, I’m fairly adamant that adventure will be a one-off – don’t worry, I love all your presents!

The next morning I woke up at 9, which was pretty good considering I had no idea how I got my contacts off, brushed my teeth and got into bed properly in my state of ethanol saturation. At church they sang “happy birthday” once more, and got another cake out! And we had yum-char afterwards to boot.

William: “I forgot my violin.”

Pastor John: “Haha, after last night I’m surprised you didn’t forget what day it was!”

Anyways, hope you enjoy the photos!

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