the big escapades: TWO AND ONE

Another post in less than 2 days! Ta-daaa... Okay, I swear this is going to be my last post about my birthday, and afterwards, we'll talk about other things. Well, to tell you the truth, other than my birthday, there isn't so much going on: just homework and hanging out with my friends.

Anyway, my birthday was a blast!! I thought it was going to be plain since my life in Art Center isn't as lavish as any other university life, nor my previous life in community college. I was still struggling with my homework on my birthday eve. I worked my butt off past midnight and it took me a while to realize that that day was my birthday. Anyway, here are a couple of highlights from the day I turned legal.

Blackberry seems to choose a fitting day to approve my account after days of waiting. This whole Blackberry in Android and iPhone thing have been a frenzy among Android and iPhone users. Reviving Blackberry sounds so legit seeing some people might haven't actually switched to those phones.

I also had a class that day. Most of my friends didn't know it was my birthday, until one of my friends brought it up. Three of my friends, Angela, Kelsey, and Emily were later eager to have dinner with me right after class for my birthday :'D. I was so touched, since in that particular busy week, I assumed no Art Center students would bother to go out just to have dinner. To be honest, I first hesitated because in Indonesian culture, people usually come up to the birthday person asking (even to the point demanding him/her) to treat them dinner, and sometimes, they mean it (haha, Indonesians). Meanwhile, at that time, I didn't have that much money to treat my friends haha. So I assumed my friends wanted me to treat them. However, apparently, I learned previously from a friend that in American or Western culture, whenever someone was celebrating the birthday, the birthday person didn't need to treat her/his friends. Spending time for dinner was enough to celebrate someone's birthday, and apparently that was my friends' intention. It was really sweet for Angela, Emily, and Kelsey for taking their time to have dinner with me despite the busy schedule :'D

So, after class, we went to Yeong Dong Tofu House in Arcadia for dinner. We all had fulfilling Korean soft tofu soup dinner served on stone claypot, yum!

Right after the dinner, we went to Starbucks briefly to do homework, but that didn't last long because the Starbucks was closing an hour after we just arrived.

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The next day, my roommate Mio and my neighbor Jessica came up with a surprise after they left for supermarket. Look what they brought in with them: a tiramisu cake!!!!!

Yeah apparently I looked so screwed because it was Thursday night and I was supposed to be doing my time consuming packaging homework. Anyway...

The celebration didn't end just then. Bella and Kenneth, my friends from De Anza who recently moved to LA, wanted to have dinner with me for my birthday. So after the packaging class was over, I drove to Koreatown where we all met at this small yet popular Korean restaurant that specifically served Korean ox bone soup (sul lung tang). What could've been better than a bowl of hot sul lung tang on a cold windy day?

Then we continued to Yellow Cafe, located only a few blocks from the Sul Lung tang restaurant. Apparently this fancy Korean cafe is known for its smores. I haven't had smores for a while, and even better, they provided Hershey's for the chocolate!

The celebration still continued in the weekend. I specially invited my Indonesian Art Center friends plus Kenneth from USC to my birthday dinner. I always wanted to do something special on my birthday, by any means, celebrating it. However, my birthday celebrations were never too lavish. Last year, I treated three of my friends for a Japanese dinner since I just got into Art Center, and I barely recognized a lot of people back then. Also, the reason why I invited just Indonesians this time was because lately Della, an Indonesian product student from Art Center, suggested that we should have an Indonesian Art Center students gathering. So I thought, why not kill two birds with one stone and gather Indonesian students for my birthday instead?

We had a good chat that lasted until midnight. No one got drunk even though I knew I should open beer bottles, but some people that I invited over were not 21 yet. Well, it was a cool, relaxing night with Indonesian dinner that I ordered from this nice Indonesian lady whom I regularly ordered my meals from.

I actually like the idea of inviting people over for dinner at my place rather than reserving a table for 10 people in the restaurant, mainly because you tend to have more freedom talking at your own place regardless how long you're going to spend time for it, while in the restaurant, the crowd's noise could be a b*tch and the long line in the restaurant could eventually kick you out less than an hour after you finish up your meal.