I just turned 31. And surprisingly enough (or well maybe not really), I still don’t feel the same, er, despair that other people feel when they hit this age. After all, as some people say, next year, my age will no longer be in the calendar (unless maybe you follow a different calendar and not the one where each month has only 31 days at most. But I digress…)
The celebration has once again been one that is spread out over several days, and in fact it isn’t over yet. It began last Saturday when my “office” barkada (of course we are all now spread out over different companies, hence the quotes around office) treated me to dinner in Zigurrat. I was actually late for dinner because I was cleaning my place (we were going to head there after dinner to play poker) and when I got to the resto, most of the folks were comfortably seated on the floor with their shoes off to the side and the food had already been served – Pia (who organized the event), Joh, Raffa, Chris, Che, Hannah, and Tim (who was actually on a call when I arrived and he hadn’t eaten so I guess for all intents and purposes I got there before he did. Not that it matters). A few minutes later, Meann arrived so the only person (among those of us still here in Manila) who was missing was Peegee, who had a prior engagement. I’m not really a fan of eating while sitting on the floor, mainly because I can’t sit still for very long and sitting on the floor makes me fidget a lot. The good thing though was that I found a cylindrical pillow that doubled as a stool, so I ended up eating fairly comfortably without having to stretch and re-stretch my legs every so often. The food was good, but it was quite expensive (not that it was a surprise since (1) most Indian and Persian-type restaurants are quite expensive and (2) Pia did download the . And since our tradition is that the birthday celebrator gets treated for dinner and everyone else pays, I actually felt awkward when I found out that everyone had to shell out almost P800 each!!!
So I easily agreed when the gang asked me to buy them dessert, which ended up being 94% fat-free Selecta ice cream which we just took to my pad. I had to ask both Hannah and Joh the ice cream would have that fat-free taste (i.e. not very good), and they both said that it wouldn’t so I agreed with our choice. But after trying it, I have decided that unless I go on a diet, I am steering clear of fat-free foods (except Coke light and Diet Pepsi).
When we got to my place, we ended up playing several rounds of no-limit Texas hold 'em (for those of you who don't get sportsplus, that's poker). Hannah was tired and just snuggled up in bed and had one half-asleep eye on the poker game and the other half-asleep eye on the TV. Everyone else was in the game. We decided before starting that we wouldn’t put any money in the game. Which essentially meant that people ended up being thoroughly aggressive with their betting. We had people throwing inordinate amounts of money, if not going all in even when they had awful cards, but that made for a more interesting game coz you couldn’t really tell what was gonna happen. First one out was Chris, followed by Pia. Che got pulled into an issue in the middle of the game so Chris subbed for her after he was eliminated, and after a few more rounds he got eliminated once again. By then it was quite late by our standards, and so the remaining people – me, Meann, Joh, Raffa, and Tim – decided to play one last round. I was the short stack, and when I went all in, everyone else decided to call to make it a fun final round. I was lucky to get two pairs (aces and deuces) and so I ended up one of the big winners along with Joh (we never really counted the chips we had so we don’t know who had the most “money” at the end of the game).
So that was part 1 of my celebration. The rest will follow in separate blog posts…
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