26 and counting...

Well, I turned 26 today... or I guess, technically yesterday. For some reason, this feels like a big year for me, maybe because I'm definitely out of my early-20s, almost to my late-20s... and then I feel like before I know it, I'll be 30 (which will not be a bad thing, just a bit of a shock, since I still occasionally forget that I am no longer 18). But rambling about feeling old (!?) is not why I'm updating right now. I want to post some pictures from my very spontaneous birthday bash! The plans for this par-tay came together yesterday, when Joanna asked me what I was planning for the day. Athania and I have been planning a joint party for later in the month, so I said that I wasn't planning to do anything on the day. But as soon as Jo suggested going for a nice vegitarian Indian dinner, I was convinced that I should have an actual birthday party. And luckily for me, some friends were willing to join in the festivities on extremely short notice.

Here we are at Woodlands, a vegitarian Indian place I recently rediscovered. We have a nice, paper masala dosa on the table (the first of two that we attempted to consume), as well as mango lhasis all round.
We ordered some of my favorites -- paneer masala (they didn't have spinach for palak), and baingan bhurtha (sp?). And that's a northern Indian thali in the middle.

And for dessert (or maybe I should say the first course of dessert -- you'll see what I mean later), we had gulab jamun (sp?). I think the description for this dish was something like "sweet sticky milk balls." Yumm...

And then we walked over to the Star Ferry to XTC gelato, where Salome joined the party. It turned out that I was the only one who actually wanted ice-cream (caramella and chocolate hazelnut!), so I decided that we should take a photo of everyone else watching me eat it. Right after we took the picture, we realized that it would make great promotional material for the ICS alumni association (most of us had attended the ICS alumni dinner the evening before...).
And then we ended up at Hard Rock Cafe to catch some of the Ecuador vs. Costa Rica World Cup game. Anish, Kaiser and Salome had a good view of the game, but from a very small couch.
My accidental third course of dessert was this ridiculously sweet drink I ordered called "pickled tink." I forget what was in it exactly, but boy was it sweet! I like this picture, because for some reason, my camera was focused on Kaiser's shoe instead of the beverage in the center of the photo. So much for autofocus.
So, that was my big day! Thank you to everyone who made it out to celebrate with me -- I had fun, and hope you did too! And to those of you reading this who wish you could've been there, but couldn't because of physical distance or previous plans, thanks for um, taking the time to read this...? :)