Birthday Dinners

The final continuation of my 21st birthday! :D

The day after Velvet my mom organised a family dinner. We figured a catered buffet would be easier, and did it at my uncle's printing shop. My mom's logic was that the food table could be put in the corridor so we don't need to worry about all my nieces and nephews dropping food everywhere on the floor lol.


Haha my mom forgot to get a cake so we went out to buy one that day, and the cake shop near our place absolutely refused to do ANY form of decoration on it unless it's ordered 3 days in advance -_- Like "Happy Birthday" also refuse to write. Sheesh.


Some of my cousins (all the older ahem.. adults) and my nieces/nephews (the small kids)!
My mom is the youngest of 7 children and she married quite late, so the gap between my cousins and I is massive haha. I have nephews and nieces OLDER than me lol.


With my mom!


(I'm always camera-ready)



So on the day of my birthday itself... (25th July, Monday)

It began quite mundane-ly really. I got up early to collect my French passport since the embassy seems to cease all operations after lunch hahaha.

Met Qiuting for lunch, went home and... rotted? Fell asleep? Can't even remember. Sadly turning 21 isn't as phenomenal as it's made out to be.

Alaric brought me out for dinner at night at Spruce, which I had been wanting to try! Spruce is located somewhere in between Tanglin Road and Alexandra Road.






Hehe he got me flowers! :D




Wine "cellar" on the left; all art pieces/photographs on the wall are also available for purchase.


Note the olives for snacking. Seriously, who even eats olives? I only know like a single person alive who would ingest an olive (my dad) and even so he would stop after eating 2.
Haha do any of y'all eat olives???


This is what I wanted to try! Tomato/pumpkin soup (I can't remember). Yummy!


Alaric's steak. Think it was not too bad but not as good as my...


Duck meat pasta! I know it looks quite gross here... But it's really good! Anyone going to Spruce should try it!


Haha the floor was slanted, so 6 out 7 shots looked weird. This was the most passable.








Close-up of the bouquet.

So that was it! Feels sordidly uninteresting to turn 21. When you were younger being 21 was like, becoming THE adult. Always imagined 21 year olds to be mature and smart and well-traveled (or about to)... like they could take on the world hahaha.

It's like how now I still imagine working women to be in a whole, inexplicable dimension of their own with bosses, 9 to 5s, monthly pays, strict A-line skirts and blazers... but in reality that's where I'm going to be in 2 years (assuming I get a job) (optimism) :o unfathomable.

I'm so scared to grow up! After school we enter 4 decades of a daily grind in out in out to put food on the table and money in the bank; whatever's left after paying off the monthly debt repayments...

Being young is when you have the most fun no? Where everything is new. Where you have the most to look forward to because you keep thinking that with each stage you attain (13, 16, 18, 21) it'll open a whole new world of adventures.

But you get to the end and you're like :o Omg. I'm at the end. What did I do with the last few years? Was this what I thought it would be like when I was 7 years old playing grown-up with my Barbie dolls? Back then, being 21 was a mysterious, untouchable world; just like how the working world is for me now.

So this shall be my second year of being 20 years old. Kthanx goodbai.