Sixteen

My birthday was amazing. It was beautiful, memorable, lovely, touching... every adjective that I could think of couldn't really describe it well enough. My family and my friends made it awesome in every way. Here's a breakdown of sorts to commemorate my extensive celebration of my sweet sixteenth.

30 April, 2010

It's custom in my family to go out on the eve and have ice cream. However, this year we deviated a bit, as on this particular Friday night, I was dreadfully in need of a break and some sugar in my system. So my parents decided to take me out, and my sister volunteered to belanja us all Coffee Bean drinks. I took my favourite White Chocolate Dream in Hartamas Coffee Bean as my birthday eve ice cream. :) Ily, gche.

Midnight, 0000 on 020510

Another custom - cutting the birthday cake at midnight. That's what I did, even though we all had to go to 8.30 mass the next morning. We set the place up in the dining room, with Clover the first to be stationed.

The laptop is so we could webcam with my sister Jeannie and Mark. They live in NewZealand, you know? Which means that, at a quarter to twelve here, it was a quarter to five there? As in, 4.45 a.m.? My big che che stayed up for me, can you imagine?

My cake was lovely. Secret Recipe's New York Cheesecake. Yumm. My first whole birthday cake in years.

This is my daddy working really hard to keep the candles perfect.

Then I got presents. The first was one I had tried on that very day, an outfit from Kitschen I totally love. I still love it. It's been a week since I got in, and I've worn it twice! It's the closest thing I have to those trench-coat dresses I really covet - and guess what, it's better! Thanks, Jamie Tan, I loveee you.

And purple jewelery I had pointed out to my mum ages ago. Meant for my purple birthday dress she bought me earlier. Wow, she really splashed.

Camwhored a bit, since it was my bday and I was in a dress, and to show off my blue fingernails, which I always love.

The morning

Woke up early to go to 8.30a.m. mass. Tee hee, skipped BibleKnowledge and Confirmation classes. Wore the Kitschen outfit from gche. Got special blessing from Fr. Simon (*faints*) and wished by my lovely BEC members, who, fyi, are all adults. Thank you Aunty Assunta, and of course Aunty Immelda, who gave me the angpau she long wanted to give me for my PMR results. Then I got coaxed by mum to go to Coffee Ritual for breakfast. I had a crepe there, which is nice because I added the RM4-costing Berkely Farms icecream, with ice chocolate, but the coffee was bad.

And it turned out my new necklace looked  better with my black outfit that the purple one I wore later.

Came home and my sister surprised me by letting me open a present, because the black outfit I'd chosen myself. Hehe, it was a nice-cutting shirt that said, "Thursdays I don't care about you!"

The lunch

Before I knew it we were off to lunch. Went to Italiannies, at the Curve. We shared mushroom soup (mmmm!), a risotto and chicken with appetisers. I felt like I was going to burst, the portions are genormous!

The dinner

Feeling like a bouncy castle, I went home, washed my hair and started to get ready for my dinner with my friends. Used the makeup my mum got me earlier as a present. (: Also wore the gorgeous purple top I'd gotten from Kitschen earlier to wear on this very occasion. I love it. Tee hee. I went to yogitree, at the Gardens. I chose it because I didn't want some place noisy to have dinner with my friends. Who was there? My darlings of course, Li Sar Chalystha Joey Nicole, and Jocelyn, Gan, Donovan, Aqeemul, (Thayaalan Pirevan and Roshan.) The three in brackets left early and were sort of stoning by themselves before that, God knows why, maybe because, I don't know, Pirevan got rejected by that model-girl? Jocelyn gave me her present the minute she saw me (:

Yeah well there are very few pictures with me because I stupidly trusted monkey to take the pictures with his girlfriend the DSLR, which actually wasn't stupid, but I trusted him to upload them, and that was stupid.

Dinner was fine. Quiet but meaningful, just the way I wanted in. The yogitree people were nice. No actually  only he was nice. Or she. God, that was the dilemma of the meal for us. Was it - I mean, the waiter - or waitress - GARGH, the person, a he or she? It doesn't matter, he/she was really, really, really nice. He/she brought me a cake and they sang me happy birthday. (: Yes, pictures, are, with, AQEEMUL.

After dinner, the darling presented me with a card. Inside, LiSar told me, the people who had paid for my croc heels, which I was wearing at that very moment had signed their names. And, she told me further, they were paying for the full price of it.

I was shocked. Speechless, seriously, the look on my face, if I failed to disguise it, would have been priceless. Because these lovely to-die-for blue hanalei coral-printed 3-inch croslite-and-canvas material wedges cost a whopping RM229.00. And the original agreement when I bought them was that one side would be bought by my parents, the other by my darlings. I think if I hadn't caught myself I wouldn't have been able to keep the tears I felt in my eyes back.

Thank you, lisar, joey, nicole, chalystha, gan, don, hanwey, thayaalan, pirevan, roshan, and aqeemul. From the bottom of my heart.

(Oh, walking in these heels feels like walking on air!)

The aimless walking around

The three Indian boys (haha, racist sia) and Jocelyn were replaced by XinYou, who came late. We basically just walked around Gardens, trying to find a place where we could hang around and relax and NOT pay. We took pictures while searching. 

Yeah, that's the guy who has most of the pictures but won't upload them.

The rooftop

We finally did find a place in Gardens where we could hang out, make a lot of noise, have privacy, and not pay. Surprised? Well, I didn't say it was legal. It was the rooftop of the mall. All the doors leading to it were locked except for one, and we used that one. It's somewhere quite close the Gardens hotel. As my bestie Lisar pointed out, when we first went up there, most of the lights of the hotel rooms were off, but after five minutes, quite a number of them had been flipped on. Well, we tried to be quieter after that.

It had just stormed, and the ground was wet, so but it also meant the air was cool. The view was amazing, especially after we climbed up to that raised part where they have some plants and stuff before the railing that keeps you from falling down all the way from the highest point of Gardens. It was so cool that nic and I climbed onto Don and Gan's shoulders to have a better look. We didn't really know what we were doing, but we were many feet away from the railing and it was safe. I have limited pictures, my old digital was nothing compared to a DSLR in the hands of a loving professional.

haha, see what I mean?

And then some of us started getting bored with the tiny space there. So, I don't know who found that by hopping via this space between two walls you could get to another area. Except that this space between the two walls consisted of a small drain, so you had to be pretty nifty with your feet, or in other words, not wearing high heels. Luckily that same person discovered another scary emergency-door way that you could go to that courtyard-like area. I made XY piggy back me by stepping between where the side of the drain and the walls, 'cause the other way was scary. And then, we were in the courtyard.

On the edge of the rooftop courtyard, there was this, I don't know, structure? It looked like a water tank to me, if watertanks are solid cement 10ftx10ft structures that you need to climb an iron ladder to get to the top of. Well, I hesitated, but climbing this "watertank" was cool, because obviously, the view up there would be better than anything else. And it looked safe, and since I'm writing this, yes, it was safe. So, yeah, well, we climbed it. XinYou and Donovan were a really great help. Chivalry, when you're a girl climbing up a ladder in heels with a handbag, is not dead.

From up there, it was worth it to see this

Yeah, nothing to keep us from falling hundreds of feet behind us.

Haha, I kept on expecting someone to yell at us and ask us to come the hell down! Or even worse, that someone would lock our only way back into the mall. One awkward phone call to make to your parents. Hey, mom, I got locked out of Gardens, and now I'm stuck on the rooftop with no way in.

The whole thing may have been lame and stupid, but it contributed to form so many precious memories of me with my friends, breathing in air cool after the rain, fooling around with the thrill of doing something not exactly permitted, seeing the nightlights spread out all around you, 180 degrees, in a way you would not usually see them, on my sixteenth birthday. It was one of the closest thing to magical I'd ever felt.

Supper

I actually had a stomachache that made me leave MidV, probably caused by eating the whole day relentlessly and then doing stupid things like jumping on people's backs and climbing watertanks immediately after dinner. But I went home, rubbed on ointment and decided not to waste anymore of my birthday. Went out to PappaRich at Dataran Tiga Dua, where I got a free eggtart when I told our regular waiter it was my birthday. And since my dad was in such a generous mood and you only turn sixteen once, I weaseled an okay to go to Starbucks, two shops away, immediately after eating at PappaRich, to have a javachip drink. (:

And then I went home, packed my bags for school and cleaned up, and with twelve strikes of the grandfather clock, my magical day ended. But I didn't feel sad. Because to me it was a magical day starting my next year, my sixteenth year in this world, and magical years start with magical days.

The presents

I've already mentioned the makeup, necklace, earrings and cake from my parents, the outfit and shirt from my sister, the shoes from those 11 friends, so I have to mention the others who gave me gifts. Jocelyn, who gave me windchimes, which my friends took turns to hold for me while we were hanging around gardens, thanks! Your windchimes didn't break, despite their ill-treatment. MeiYee, thanks for the bracelet! Tharini, you shocked me, ya know, for getting me anything at all, you're losing your evil touch. XinYou, that glass swan is really sweet. And TZENREN! Omg, the pearl necklace looks damn nice on me, hahaha, and you ran away after you gave it to me.

The thoughts

Not forgetting the smses that came raining in at midnight and throughout the day, and the clutter on my Wall, each one never failing to touch me to the heart. Like the note HuiJan wrote me. Oh, and the wishes, always important!

I don't know what to say, what to say to everyone. All I can think of is thank you, because, after all, there is only so much words can say.