In a fashion similar to last year's, my birthday celebrations went on from 27th November all the way till the day of my birthday itself.

I kicked it off by going with some dear friends to watch "Whose Line Is It Anyway?", an absolutely hilarious improvisational comedy show which everyone simply has to go see live in order to appreciate the sheer brillance of the cast. I was laughing so much, far harder than I'd laughed in a while. If you know me, you'll know that there's quite a hard thing for me to do.

This was followed by my going to Zouk to catch the fantastic John Digweed in an almost-marathon set where he spun for over five hours. I couldn't recognise any of the tunes he played, but his build up was incredible and the mixing seamless. The choice of tunes was impeccable and all in all, I had a wonderful night. I even managed to get him to autograph me a birthday message!

The only downside of the night was one of my friends trying her best to pimp me to a guy she had just met in order to win a bet that she had made with one of the guy's friends. I felt so awkward that in spite of the nice conversation that I had been having with the guy, I ran away.

On Sunday, my parents brought me to a Russian restaurant which had opened the day before. The chicken shashlik was nicely done (and at S$12, great value-for-money) but the rest of the food was average. The highlight of the night happened to be the cute friendly Egyptian waiter who caused me to spend most of dinner trying to figure out how to get to know him better while my parents were around. In the end, as we were the only customers in the restaurant, I walked up to the counter, introduced myself to him (we already knew his name) and gave the owner my card (which didn't have my contact number on it). At this point, the waiter came over pointing out the lack of telephone numbers whereupon I wrote down my office number. He then asked me for my mobile number, which I gave and he copied onto another card because, he said, his boss would be taking my card. *grin*

Monday - back to work where my boss expressed disappointment at my leaving the office at 7 pm on Friday when I went to meet friends as another colleague had stayed back to extract the data I needed for a paper I was working on. Now, this might sound as if I did something wrong, but let me point out here that the colleague e-mailed the data to me at 9.30 pm which would mean that I'd have to be sitting around until 10 pm before I would be able to get anything useful done. Ergo, what was the point? Anyway, in order to appease my boss, I ended up staying late to work on that paper and narrowly managed to avoid turning 24 in the office by 45 minutes.

My colleagues thought I was insane because even at 10.30 pm, I was still humming and bouncing around the office, high from the birthday celebration earlier in the evening (with a delicious chocolate cake from Prima Deli and a home-baked quiche contributed by a colleague), and from listening to one of the best pop Christmas carols of all-time: Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You.

Tuesday - I didn't anticipate anything much, having expended so much energy over the past few days that I didn't feel up to anything. However, I was dressed up in a pretty mint green dress, as is my inclination whenever it's my birthday (to be dressed up that is, not just the dress) so I was just feeling happy. My colleagues brought me out to lunch at Wildfire and positively stuffed me with food. After work, I met my non-gay gay best friend (henceforth known as NGGBF) who treated me to an ice-cream waffle at Gelare Cafe. Another colleague who had learnt it was my birthday invited me to go to New Asia Bar for drinks, so I dragged NGGBF and another friend all the way there to discover that that colleague had three bottles of champagne waiting for me to turn up. Thanks to the wonderous beverage that is orange juice, I drank six glasses of champagne and orange juice that night and ended up slightly hungover the next day.

Wednesday and Thursday - The lunch treats continued. Another colleague took me to NYDC (baked pasta!) after I had jokingly asked him for a lunch treat on Monday (Thank you! That was most unexpected and surprisingly fun!) and an old schoolfriend who happened to be back in Singapore brought me to Cedele Depot where we chatted for quite some time and griped over the difficulties of dating while working insane hours like we do. The roasted chicken sandwich with sundried tomatoes was absolutely divine.

And there you have it. My birthday celebrations.