My 20++ birthday celebration(s)

Prologue
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I've fast forwarded everything a bit to skip my company F2F (Face to Face) Hadyai trip & my personal Genting trip posts, coz I just can't wait to blog about my birthday celebrations! They're all not big but I treasure them just as much...

PART I
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I celebrated my birthday this year last Friday and I didn't expect much from my bf, due to financial limitations (we lost to Uncle Lim at Genting you see, hehe), so I didn't want my bf to spend a lot for my birthday as well. I woke up in the morning of my birthday at about 10+ am (it was my off day) and felt a
bit weird, coz I felt hot and sensing the beginning of the symptoms of a running nose. Uh-oh, it wasn't a good start to my birthday but I wasn't letting this dampen my spirit for the day! Coz my bf did promise to bring me for a nice dinner either at Evergreen Hotel's buffet dinner or steak at Victoria Station.

So I called Evergreen to ask about the buffet - what's the theme and how much per pax and was told it's seafood buffet for the night, and it costs RM65nett per pax. I thought to myself that it's pretty pricey for a buffet so I called him and told him we can actually go for steak instead.

By the time evening came, I showered, changed, put on some make up, blush and accessories and ready to go, totally forgetting the fact that the symptoms of fever and flu have worsened a bit. So there I was, sitting in my living room, waiting for my bf to call me to go downstairs, and all of a sudden, I saw a figure appearing at my doorstep, calling my name.... and there he was- my bf, carrying a bouquet of red roses in his hands! It was such a surprise! I could still vividly recall him having a broad but cheeky smile on his face while waiting for me to react... I was so touched that I had tears rolling in my eyes; coz all the while I loved to have my loved one give me flowers coz I'm a sucker for drop dead type of romance and have always complained that he was never romantic enough to buy me flowers...

When I brought the flowers into the house my grandma asked who gave me those as she didn't see my bf standing at the door outside, she thought that he was the flower delivery guy (hah!), and commented that it must cost a bit for that bouquet. So after admiring the flower a while I put it in my room, on my bed coz we were ready to head out for dinner.

I was such a happy girl coz this was only the second time I had a loved one present me a bouquet of roses since my first ex, who asked one of his friend to order one and have it delivered to my house on my birthday itself (he was away that time). But to receive it in person, from my honey, on my birthday meant so much to me! We kissed passionately in the lift on our way down to the car park... it was such a sweet moment indeed...

So here we go, admire my red roses! :D

Overview 360 degree shots:-














































From top:-

From the side:-














The wrapper with heart and dove details:-














The ribbons:-














Finally, a close-up shot where you can see the glittery bits on the roses!
















PART II
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In the end, my bf really wanted me to have a nice dinner for my birthday and so we went to Evergreen Hotel for their seafood buffet. We reached there around 8pm and the Cafe was already packed, nevertheless there was still a table for us.














We didn't waste time and headed straight out for the seafood galore - there were prawns, fishes, calamari, lobster, sashimi, stuffed crab, seafood lasagna, seafood salads, shark's fin soup, even with a complete "steamboat" station for patrons to help theirselves with!

As for dessert, due to the wide variety of seafood occupying the main buffet spread, they have toned the usually big dessert table down - but still, I was impressed by their wide variety of topping offerings to go with the ice cream.

This was what I started with:-














Clockwise from 12 o'clock:-
Stuffed crab : this was a bit huge in portion, but not very good in texture and flavour
Seafood lasagna : this was very good - soft and full of seafood flavour - with prawns, fish, etc in it
Chilli prawns : the prawns were awful as they were not fresh
Calamari - Ahhh... my favourite - the first batch tasted pretty good even not very warm, but the second batch, although just cooked, didn't tasted as good as the first one
Crabmeat seafood salad - this was done just right - right amount of dressing, crabmeat and finely sliced cucumber
The nicest of all - Lobster! This was just nicely marinated and roasted slightly but the juiciness were intact - Yummmmmmy! (A lot of people just go for these by platefuls - such typical Malaysians)
Poached fish - this is good stuff I tell you - cooked perfectly - not overly, but just nice to taste the tenderness of the meat

Of course, we had the shark's fin soup as well - mind you, we didn't see much of shark's fin inside, merely tonnes of cuttlefish slices in a thickened shark's-fin-like concoction. Also, we had sashimi as well coz I knew how good the sashimis at their buffet are, and he wasn't keen on trying it out since they're raw, so I cooked up some Japanese soy with wasabi, then dipped a slice of sashimi in, then asked him to try it out; and sure enough, he liked it and we had a couple more slices afterwhich :) he agreed that the sashimis were really fresh and it made it very welcomed to our senses. Mind you, we had our money's worth coz I went for 2 ice cream helpings - both with one each of corn and yam flavoured ice cream with chocolate flakes & blueberry sauce toppings. The blueberry sauce turned out to be really good coz it wasn't too sweet at all and we can taste blueberries in it too.

During dinner he asked me did I liked the flowers, was I surprised coz he wanted to give me a surprise as he knew how much I liked flowers and wanted to personally give it to me... he told me he felt a bit shy carrying a bouquet of flowers, walking out from the florist, and the girl at the florist told him it's very normal nowadays for guys to carry flowers to give to their lovers; and when he took the lift to come up to my house, there
were 3 indian guys with one of them asking him are those real or fake? Well of course they are real!

Coincidentally, I received birthday wishes via sms on my mobile during dinner, it was from my God Sis, to find out that she's actually just upstairs at the ballroom having a friend's wedding dinner. So later in the evening she came and joined us at our table, we chit chatted a bit and went over to Gurney Drive and hung around a while more before going home.

I took the pictures of my roses non-stop at home *giggle* as well as having my bf take pictures of me and the roses together, as well as him and myself with it on the next day as well, yeah yeah, I AM a sucker for flowers, so what? I love them!

PART III
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I was a little disappointed since none of my colleagues wished me, when they celebrated all of the rest's birthday, while I do understood that I was off shift that day, so they postponed it to Monday where they bought an awfully nice blueberry cake and sung Happy Birthday at my desk! Though it was a belated mini celebration, nevertheless it's the thought that counts - too bad it was a terribly busy day at work that day for all of us, but it was a nice gesture, thanks girls! (Turns out that the guys were off shift that day)

Here's the yummy cake! btw, that's Lynn - she came by just to join in the mini celebration - thanks!




























All in all, it was a very warm, romantic, and happy birthday this year - though I was not in prime condition - feeling sick and all; but my heart was indeed full - thanks to everyone who remembered - my family; my honey; siew moi moi(thanks for such a beautiful virtual cake), Dorene, Ling, BLeng, my God Sis; YL; and the girls in the team. You've all made my birthday memorable.

Baby Pineapple growing in my balcony!

But of course, the pineapple plant has been constantly taken care of by my dad and my grandma to have a baby one popping out!

A new baby pineapple is growing and it's so cute! The last time we had a baby pineapple growing from a different plant as well so this is our second 'baby' already!

This was shot on 22nd of April:-















Orangish in colour

3 weeks later on May 15th, it's grown bigger already:-

Yellowish prime colour

And now, after another 3 weeks (June 9th), look at how big the upper portion has grown into! But judging by the pale greenish colour it's currently adourning, I think it's quickly coming to and end :(

Corner-ish shaped work desk

So this is my desk at my current work place. I didn't actually capture the left most or right most of the desk, otherwise there will be a clearer picture of my entire desk's workspace I have.

We sit 2 persons to a cubicle and it's opened in the middle, unlike the conventional ones which has only 1 open and sits 2 persons on the left and 2 persons on the right; and notice our partitions are relatively low in nature compared to most other floors or departments where the partitions go up to as high as an average person's neck. Low partitions are good for us as we can communicate (read : gossip & yacking away) freely to the persons on the other sides of the partition, etc.

Notice the presence of a relatively huge phone? Due to the nature of my job, hence reason for such a phone, but the ironic thing is, we hardly pounce on the other 21 option buttons on the right of the phone except for one - dialling; and another one for re-dialling the last number; so it still puzzles me to this day why we need such a huge phone with all the confusing buttons for.

When I first came in and saw how many buttons there were on the phone, I got really terrified coz I was thinking to myself how on earth will I be able to be competent enough to simply USE the darn phone! Luckily 2 buttons are the only ones I had to know *whew*

Also we get an flat screen monitor coz we had to do batch monitoring as well, though we have a dedicated workdesk just for batch monitoring just across the corridor (will snap a pic and post later on), we can actually opt to monitor batch jobs from our desk if we want - that's what one of the other team is doing right now.

Lately I've not been spending time at my desk at all as I had to do batch monitoring and next week will be the same. I missed my work desk and I enjoyed working at my desk yesterday when it was actually my off day, I just thought of doing up some work notes and organising them into files.

MNG selling their mannequins?

Nah. I'm kinda impressed with the huge shopping bag though. Where on earth did they source it from?

Anyway, the bags are kinda cool. I like 'em.

Can't imagine having one of those at home. What oh what should I put inside?