Birthday!

Happy birthday! I am now twenty two years old. I got several birthday-wishes and three gifts from John, one for every day of celebration. I wrote about a board game called Quixo in an earlier post and mentioned Love Letter, a card game, in the previous one. Today I got the best of board games, one that I can play alone and up to eight players. It is called Eldritch Horror and it is the players against the game. I have not read the rules yet, but it was a heavy box and there are so many things in there. I can not wait until I know this game by heart!

There was only one plan today - dinner at a fancy restaurant. This is exactly what I wanted. I love John, he knows me so unbelievably well. He asked what I wanted to eat for lunch and I was happy to go downstairs to the food court. There were a lot of people - since it is Sunday and there is a church across the street - so the queues were long. We stood for quite a while before receiving the ordered food, then ate it by the computers while gaming.

Around five I started making myself ready. Since I have had curled hair two days in a row I tried straightening it today. Looked so different, but nice! Short hair suits me, I like it. I put on some modest makeup and tried to find my beloved earrings. They were gone. Suddenly I remembered having left them on the living room table last night. They were not there. I turned my eyes to the cat but he was not willing to tell me where they were. In the middle of getting-ready-for-fancy-dinner-preparations we started looking for them. John found one under the washing machine. The other one is still lost in the apartment. No vacuum cleaning until found!

Half past six we ordered a cab. Two minutes it said so we went to the car park. The taxi was not waiting. John called him but the man said he could not find the car park, that he were not let inside and that he did not find us. So we had to walk out of the car park. Now, this may sound like nothing, but the car park is so big that it takes a few minutes to get out. Two floors down and the ramp up were on the other side to where we were. When we finally got out the driver called us and said he had found the pickup point. We told him that he was so late we had walked out and said he should meet us by the gate. Finally inside the car we drove ten minutes to Orchard Road.

The restaurant was called Crystal Jade Golden Palace. It has one Michelin-star and was inside a pretty expensive mall called Paragon. The stores around were Gucci, Prada, Miu Miu and so on. We walked in and was seated at our table. It was not on the lower floor but up on a little private alcove with two tables. One was a two seated table and it was taken, the one we got was four seats. The couple left shortly after we arrived and so we had a very private dinner. I later found out that John had told them that it was my birthday and I suspect this is why we were placed here.

 

They had two menus, one set which is a lot of small dishes and one large with so much to choose between. We asked for recommendations and after some consideration we ordered. From left to right we have a grouper fish with vermicelli (this was my favourite), chicken with cashews and some strange spice that made your tongue go numb, pork and duck with two sauces not shown in picture (Johns favourite) and rice with prawn and vegetables. Everything tasted really nice and we only had water to drink to not spoil the taste.

    

Lastly, because John had mentioned my birthday when he booked the table, they served these three small deserts free of charge. The yellow jelly did not taste anything until you swallowed it, then there was a small umami lemonish taste. The white and pink bubble was called a birthday bun which had lotus-paste inside. The more I ate the more I liked it. Last thing was the best. Sesame seed ball which had (surprisingly) sesame seeds inside it. Looks dark, and it was, but really good.

 

Thank you for a good birthday. They seem to only get better with you, John!