Happy 21st Birthday!! (Part 2 - Celebration)

 Friday, October 10, 2008

This invitation letter was designed by me and sent out to the invited. I loved the design and I kept one for myself. Kinda cool color combination. Someone told me that it looked like some clubbing invitation. LOL!!!So on the day itself, I woke up at about 10a.m. That's quite early for a dude like me since I usually sleep late. Packed up all my stuff and I left the house at about 12.30pm. Had to get all the remaining stuff that I needed. So DL and me took a cab to Westmall to buy whatever I needed. Had lunch there as well. Some nincompoop msged me last minute saying she couldn't come which really pissed me off. It was on that day itself which was even worse news than the one Gladys apparently gave me on that week itself. So, being really pissed, I grabbed the cake from Swensen's as well as other stuff that I needed and boarded my limo which headed to Copthorne King's Hotel. After boarding the limo, I kinda felt better actually. Probably because the limo was moving really swiftly. We reached the hotel at about 2.30p.m and my room wasn't ready yet. They gave me my room card and I had to wait for quite a while. So we waited for a while for the room to get prepared while we took a walk outside. Once it was ready, I went in and I got myself prepared to soak myself inside the bathtub full of foam. It was so fun lah... Like a little boy playing with bubbles while bathing. There was no way I could resist this!! And not forgetting the bathrobe that I bought. It's so comfy and I'm using it everyday!! :D It really keeps me warm when the weather is cold. Sometimes I just wrap myself in the bathrobe when mornings are just too cold! After a while, it was soon evening and Ishak, Vincent as well as Poh Leng arrived first. I wasn't ready so I asked them to go up to my room, where Ishak gave me the present from the 3 of them. I'm telling you.. I love my room so much I kept camslutting in front of the mirrors. There were so many anyway!!The bed was so comfortable. I know I'm 21 already... But on that day, I just started jumping on the bed. Maybe I should change my current bed to a spring mattress!! It was damn cosy lah. I WOULDN'T SETTLE FOR ANYTHING LESSER THAN THAT. I won't even want to stay at the chalet. It's like so ewww... old and rundown... and cliché... And if I were to go overseas, HOTELS only... :P No stupid dormitory or hostel crap. Well.... As you can see, I was still quite high, taking photos of my beloved hotel room. Apparently, there wasn't any withdrawal symptoms after I left the hotel. Just missed sleeping there... Hahaha... Anyway, after preparing, I realised I didn't have my hair wax with me and I started panicking. I asked Md Noor to come down earlier to pass me the wax and camera, which, he failed to do so and came together with my parents instead after looking too long into the mirror styling his hair. hahahahah..... I didn't panic later on but I was damn shocked that I took less than 5 mins to style my hair and make it look right for the rest of the night.

I was there a little earlier before 7pm and made sure everything was well. Sure enough, Brennan took care of everything. Brennan is the F&B Operations Manager at the hotel and he made the whole process so smooth for me. The layout of the room and so on, it was changed last minute but it turned out better than I expected. The reception was shifted from the lobby to the resting area itself so it wouldn't be that sqeezy as they had a table and 2 chairs at the lobby itself. When people came in, they wrote their well wishes to me on the piece of paper, which I would laminate and frame it up soon. And this sign was placed just outside the function room Near to the reception is the resting area. Ken and Lokesh sat there whilw waiting for me to be free as I was attending to of of my friend/guest. I want the chair. Was darn comfy lah... I could probably sleep in it. :PThe buffet area was well-setup and we had ample space to have fun (e.g., Vivian feeding me butter. LOL!!) as well as taking photos like these. :D The dining area itself looked really romantic. They were saying that my birthday celebration seemed more like a wedding dinner. LOL!! Well, it was certainly nice for my family and VIPs to sit at the VIP table (no picture here) with Gold Table cloth over the table. I love the buffet spread and the way it was being displayed. Everyone loved the smoked salmon. Apparently, they had to refill that 3 times!! Yes!! 3 times. The pictures above were actually Hors d'oeuvre. It's DEFINITELY not a salad bar, though salads were served as well. It consisted of the smoked salmon that was snapped up within a matter of minutes.The main dishes included Ee Fu noodles, Black Pepper Venison, Sautéed Coral Clam and more... I love their Ee Fu noodles. It was really special. I DON'T LIKE EE FU NOODLES. This one proved that I didn't make the wrong choice. I almost chose Bee Hoon to go with the Chicken Curry, another dish which everyone went to dig! But yea... Ee Fu noodles was my final choice. And I didn't regret it!

Ken and Lokesh came in later, followed by Vivian and Kristine, who were previously targeted by Poh Leng and Ishak. When they 2 girls arrived, they went silent. Well, of course, we took photos together. Miss Robert came!! I was so darn happy that she could make it lah. She has been guiding me so much since secondary school. And she turned down everyone else so that she could come to my party. Really appreciate it!! And she looked exceptionally beautiful that day!If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't know what I would wanna do, or even being earning anything right now. Kyle, Jeron, Max & wife came later. Apparently, Ken and Kyle used to be schoolmates. What a small world!! Bad blood with each other? Not sure... Hahaha... Gotta ask 'em... So, we had food and drinks that was buffet style. Y'all know me... Being a buffet guy, I couldn't resist having a buffet instead of them served up dishes as we could take as much as we want, when we want it and how we want it. Thanks to CLYF, we got we got all the amazing pictures taken by him at the celebration itself. Went around taking photos with my friends, and family before the magic show began. Told you didn't I? Vivian is sadistic. Feeding me with butter direct from the packet itself. I have one photo of her with that evil smile on her face while feeding me with the butter. I shall be nice and not post that up. HAHAHA! Everyone started wondering what was going on and they came to look. Md Noor asked what happening and this was the "OMFG!! YOU ATE BUTTER??" face he gave which was so coincidentally snapped down by Clyf. Took photos with my family. I was giving a thank you speech to everyone there. Those people who are there basically were the people who made changes/helped me/guided me/been there for me in my life. I appreciate all they have done and this dinner was to thank them. Anyway, 2 years ago, Solomon, promised me that he would dance for me on my 21st birthday. He did it. He was like so cute lah... Dancing away... After that, he did magic tricks that not only amazed the crowd but also, the waiters standing behind. They were so called "at my beck and call" and were really helpful.My brother who gave me a big ang pao, and Md Noor was called up to check to see if the chains were all secure. The whole routine looked like some Houdini's chain escape. Finally, Solomon asked me up to perform a trick for them. In actual fact, he was the one doing everything. The random person that I chose picked the invisible deck's selected card and it was the same card that I picked in the real deck. AWESOME, ain't it??
After the magic show, the function room lights dimmed and the cake was brought in while everyone sang the "Happy Birthday" song. Hey!! Where the birthday dude??? Oh!!! There he is... WAHAHAHAHA!!! Everyone singing and clapping for the birthday dude... Yayness... I'm so glad no chinese version of the song was sang. Cos chinese = i don't understand (even though I understand the song lah) cos it makes no sense to me. Weird eh? Marianne Young from Adobe came despite having a tight schedule. She was apparently having a dragon boat competition held earlier during the day, which was why she came later. I'm glad she made it anyway, she's always been supportive of what I was doing. The rest of the photos will be in my private blog, so my VIPs, go over and have a look! I love this Ice Cream Cake from Swensen's. I couldv'e gobbled down the whole cake there and then. But I didn't... Hahahahahaha!! All the pretty photos(most of them), were taken by Clyf, the photographer of the night. A big THANKS to him for all the beautiful photos which i could stash somewhere as a memory of my 21st birthday. Well, at the end of the day, my dad took out his card and paid for the bill. Yes. You read right. He paid for it. But someone who knew that I paid my father first, asked me, " You not scared how people think of you meh?" Lol... I don't care actually... BUT I WAS THE ONE WHO PAID FOR THE WHOLE EVENT. I just let my dad pay because he wanted to accumulate points for his credit card. After all, I'd be either paying by cash or.... by cash... and I've already placed a desposit. So I might as well pay him first so he could accumulate points which he could probably use later on to redeem something to pamper himself? As a matter of fact, I paid him 2 weeks prior to the celebration so that I could party in peace. :D

Anyway, thank you guys for all the presents too!! I got more angpows than presents actually. You guys rock lah..... Hahahahaha... They were like, "I didn't know what you like, so here's your ang pow." So sweet of them!! Anyway, I have also received presents from people like, Kristine and Vivian. Both of them gave me Royce Chocolates. They didn't know that I love Royce Chocolates but they still bought it anyway. The Nutty Bar Chocolate was from Kristine, while the two round chocolates were from Vivian. Of course, they DIDN'T just give me one bar and 2 coin-like chocolates. I just took them out from the box to.... well...... take some photos and then eat the chocolates. Ben was the the first person to give me my present though, and yeah, cos he's too young his mama didn't allow him to come for my birthday party. He made me this special pen that I could write and spin as well. How sweet of him!! I'm still learning though. Kinda hard since now I'm usually on the computer. But I still do use pens though so that should come in handy. Ping came last minute and she still got the time to get me this Burberry miniature perfume set. So darn sweet of her lah. I'm probably gonna put this up onto my shelf. Hahaha.. It'll sure look nice on the shelf. And I also got this shirt as my present from D. I friggin love this shirt!! It's from Litmus and it's so friggin comfortable lah... Besides the presents, I had a week of celebration for my 21st Birthday. We had New York New York, I ate the same thing when I went there with Hye Jun. Except that I ordered this mussels. Not bad, I should say. But kinda mundane. The staff there were so noisy. Gossiping behind us and so on... It was irritating.. But yeah... I enjoyed myself still... Then we also went to Seoul Garden... Hehehe... Buffet again... On Wednesday, I met up with Md Noor at Holland Village and Ms Tan was there too!! She gave me a surprise from behind holding this cake, singing happy birthday. We sat for a while and then We went Sushi-Tei to eat Salmon Sashimi and Paper Steamboat. It was good and of course, I enjoyed their company. On Thursday itself, it was my birthday. I woke up with my phone flooded with birthday wishes. I wanted to cook on that day, so I bought food from Cold Storage at Bugis after lunch at a Korean Restaurant. Haven't eaten Korean food for a long time. And the food was PERFECT.The Kimchi was good, the chicken bulgogi was good, and the steamboat was also good. I had an awesome lunch. I cooked this for dinner. Looks kinda sucky though... If u look at the back of the plate, you'd see snail shells. Yup, I bought escargot. It was not that wonderful lah. Next time I should just bake it with my own fillings instead.Went to Millenia Walk today to chill out. Walked around there and then went to Bakerzin. The Seafood Flaky Pizza was good. The service was really bad though. Not even a cup of Ice water. I bet the manager wasn't there or something that's why all slack. The desserts were not nice at all lah... I was like, ewww..... the whole time while eating it. If they had the chocolate amer, I would have gotten that. But yeah.. I still enjoyed myself so.... I'm happy!! It's been such a great week for me. Thank you guys for all the well wishes, presents and angpows...  I had a great time and this is the best birthday celebration. A big thank you goes out to all who made this so awesome. 

Labels: Carlsson Chee, Carlsson's 21st Birthday, Copthorne King's Hotel

updated by carlsson @ 10/10/2008 08:57:00 PM**