my early 21st birthday cum farewell gatherings were held on 20th Jan (Sun) at 130pm at my house and 7pm at evergreen park condo function room. the first was for church friends and the one in the evening was for PL and VJ friends. lots of preparations were done beforehand – the buying/making of food, the cleaning of the house, the decorations. in the end, the house (without the people yet) looked like this:
meanwhile, my church friends were busy themselves *sneaky sneaky*. i knew they were up to something but i didn’t know what. i had told jia i wanted a digital camera but i didn’t really think that they would really get me one – it was more like just wishful thinking.
after all the planning (on both sides on hindsight), 20th Jan came. some of us (amanda, claire, nicky, janice t, sarah, me) took bus while matt and bern ferried the others to my place. it was drizzling but the walk-and-take-bus gang had enough umbrellas to go round so we weren’t wet when we got to my house.
after most people had arrived, everything was well on its way. mummy and godma had taken care of the food and drinks; matt, papa and i got the slideshow of my pictures up and my birthday song playlist playing. i was glad that everybody seemed to be making themselves comfortable and felt at home:
for lunch, mum and i had planned a pizza, pasta, and potato salad lunch with green salad and seafood fritters. (i think canadian pizza 2 for 1 was very happy with our big order haha.) we also had bought potato chips and cookies for appetisers/dessert. i had felt it was too much food but mum kept repeating that there was going to be 30 people and that most of them would be food-loving bcyouths 
on the day itself, this is what happened: the potato chips went really fast – i think 3 packs were walloped at the start. the main courses went too but in the end, we had quite a lot of leftover pizza and potato salad. no matter - we have pizza and potato salad to eat for the next few days which is fine by us!
after the food, i made everybody sit down in a circle and explain why they “were twenty-one”. some had twenty-one hair clips on (janice t had 21 on her own hair whereas others collectively had 21) and some use cards (bryan, fifi and ethan each had a polka card with 7 shapes and cher pasted a ‘2′ and ’1′ uno card on her shirt). nicky had a twenty-one themed shirt (thanks nicky!), alice had a really nice hat with the numbers 21 on it and janice y had 21 “appendages”, which i thought was really cool. check it out:
after this, we played games related to the theme: the +-x/ to get 21 card game, the getting crushed paper balls from different distances into my dustbin in 21 tries, 21 square twister and hulahooping 21 times. elaine was really quick solving the +-x/ thing, amazing all of us, especially godma. for the hulahooping, some people found their hidden talents even though they thought they could not do it while others were good sports (=
it was then time for cake. amanda had baked me 2 trays of brownies with icing sugar which looked (and tasted!) really delish and we had them with vanilla ice cream. YUMM-MYY! :
to top it all off, guess what? all of them plus papa and mummy actually gave me a digital camera for my adventures in UK! i admit i was a little hysterical – hysterically happy haha.
(my many reactions while everybody around me was smiling away.) thank you thank you! i will think of all of you when i take pictures with it in the future :) thank you for being a part of my life and thank you for making this day truly a milestone… THANK YOU EVERYBODY!
PS: i apologize that the photos are not very clear! i’m not sure why but hopefully you’ll be able to tell who’s who (:
hello world!
