Birthday Celebration part 5 and a bit of bowling

This is essentially the last installment of my birthday celebration series. =) I celebrated with my friends from my first job – Bett, Chari, Anna, Jette, Raych, and Ric (unfortunately Lany had to rest as she was pregnant with her and Ric’s 2nd child! Congrats!). The timing couldn’t have been more perfect as one of our gang, Raych, was in the Philippines for a few weeks (during which time she also managed to watch my band) and she would be able to join us.

Chari and Bett had both just celebrated their birthdays as well, and we agreed to celebrate our birthdays together. Since there were three of us, we decided to treat everyone else to Brazil, Brazil mainly because I haven’t eaten there yet (most of us hadn’t yet, actually) and considering that three of us would be splitting the bill, we could share the load the pricey bill. =) As you could’ve expected, we raised the noise level in Brazil, Brazil quite a bit. After all, it had a few months since we all saw each other, and this was the first time we got to hang out with Raych after a few years.

For those of you who haven’t tried Brazil, Brazil, the set-up is buffet style (I’m guessing they have an ala carte menu too but none of us tried it). There’s a buffet spread at the side of the resto where you can have salad or pasta or some other food (there’s a dessert spread as well). But the coup de grace is the buffet of meats on skewers that waiters keep bringing to your table (if you read my entry on my Brazil trip ages ago, the setup is similar to that). Each table has a yoyo on it with a red side and green side. If the green side is being displayed, that means you are giving the waiters a go-signal to keep bringing meats to your table. These meats vary from beef cuts to pork to chicken to even seafood. Then when you feel you’re plate is too full with all the meat they keep bringing, you can flip your yoyo over to the red side which will tell all the waiters to stop bringing food to your table.

The food was okay. I felt thought that some of the meat they brought us was a bit too tough (too well-done for my taste, I would’ve preferred them being more medium-well). Pound-for-pound, I’d recommend Dad’s (with its Angus beef and amazing variety of food) over Brazil, Brazil. But well it’s cool that we got try a new place.

After that, we all decide to visit my place where we could all have coffee and dessert/snacks (Bett’s Banana Cream Pie, or was it something else? And Chari’s spinach dip). As you could expect most of our time was spent chatting about showbiz updates and trying to get inside info (what with Jette working in a TV station hehehe).

We all called it a day in the late afternoon. Bett’s husband Pikes had come to pick her up and Raych needed to meet up with her husband Nick who spent the day shopping. =) I on the other hand met up with my mom, brothers, and nephews. The week before, my nephews got free bowling passes during their trick-or-treating, and we decided to use them immediately because my nephews were so excited about the idea of bowling.



Anyway, when we got there, we started off with me and my nephews playing. We had the bumper guards raised so that the kids wouldn’t end up with gutter balls most of the time. And it was a lot of fun! CJ immediately picked up on the proper form and he was even holding the ball properly (you know, using the middle and ring fingers – and not the pointer finger – as well as the thumb). Ciera on the other hand kept hitting the bumper guard in the middle of the lane which meant the ball was headed towards the head pin or close to it by the time the ball had traversed the entire lane. CJ scored more than 70 pin-falls while Ciera got 60+. The kids were so excited that they wanted to play another game. This time they wanted their dad to join in. This time, CJ and Ciera had gotten slightly more used to how to play. Both of them scored spares in their games. But what was so funny was that Ciera kept rolling his ball very very slowly, but it seemed to keep getting great pin action because he ended up scoring a 98! CJ managed to score 80-something.

They enjoyed bowling so much that the week after that, we played again. This time, Ciera got tired in the middle of the game so CJ started playing the rest of his game for him. What was quite impressive as well was that on quite a few occasions, CJ actually managed to throw the ball in the center of the lane i.e. it didn’t hit the bumper guards and bring down quite a few pins. He ended up getting a 96 in his own game and a 94 in the one that he picked up from Ciera. It was so cool! We haven’t gotten to play bowling since then but it’s great that we got the chance to play bowling because now there are more things that my nephews are interested in and more things that we can bring them to whenever we go out.