Surprise! (Not Really)

Yesterday was Davinia's surprise birthday party. I only found out about it the day before when Amanda sent me a text saying that I needed to confirm whether or not I could make it because Joanna and she needed to book seats and order the food. What she didn't mention was what it was all about. I sent Joanna text and she told me to call her back later. I did, and she told me that it was Davinia's surprise birthday party. Her actual birthday was a while back, but Amanda was in Australia and most of us were busy, so we were going to celebrate it again properly. I told her that I would definitely be there.

Amanda told me that I had to drop by her house to pick up some stuff before I went to pick up Joanna and her boyfriend, Solo. I was at Amanda's house by 5:45, but I was waiting around for a while before Amanda came out with the cake she had baked, a present, and a sash that said "Birthday Girl" for Davinia. She told me not to look at the cake because it was the ugliest cake in the world.

Once everything was loaded up I drove over to the apartment that Jo and Solo were staying at. On my way in I pissed off the guard by not paying attention and almost running over a cone. I held up the Kancil's broken antennae while I waited for Joanna and Solo to come downstairs so that I could listen to the radio.

When they got in the car I told Jo that I didn't know how to get to the restaurant, so she called up her dad and had him guide us there. We arrived at LaLa Chong without incident. We were the first people there, so we went into the room, ordered our drinks, and ate peanuts while waiting. We also took some pictures.

After a while, Carmeni and Nick arrived. Unfortunately, Davinia and Amanda arrived at the exact same time. Joanna called Nick and Carmeni and told them to rush in quickly while Amanda took Davinia to the bathroom for a while. Nicholas and Carmeni managed to get inside in time, and a little later Davinia stepped in and we all said "Surprise!"

Davinia did not look very surprised, but she was happy anyway. After Nick put the Birthday Girl sash on her, Davinia told us that she had suspected something like this was going to happen. She had seen a list of invitees in Joanna's house, and she had also seen Joanna hugging Solo through the window when she arrived.

We had a good dinner anyway. It was a seafood place, so there was soup with little clam-like things, some really excellent fish, crabs, and a bunch of other stuff. Dinner conversation was all over the place. We talked about Carmeni's birthday party and what I had done and what Amanda had done. Apparently I had danced, even though I didn't remember it. Also, Amanda was so obsessed with her ex that she had ripped a button off his shirt that night. I shared what Amanda had told me with everyone, and I also let Davinia (or Jo) read a text that I had typed up that night that I did not remember. It was about how drunk I was and how Amanda should get back with her ex. We also talked about clubs (Bangsar is crap, expensive places are better, clubs with mainly Chinese patrons generally tend to be better than clubs with mainly Indian patrons) and boys' nights out and stuff. It was good times. Milan arrived a bit later when we were all about to leave.

We decided not to cut the cake at the restaurant. When Amanda mentioned that, though, Davinia chimed in that she hadn't known there was a cake. So we actually still did have a surprise, but we didn't really spring it as good as we could've. Oh well. Davinia's present from Amanda was really cool. It was huge picture collage of all her friends. I was in it, but I had pretty lousy hair in the picture that she used. Oh well.

The room we were in also had a karaoke machine. It was a bit of a struggle to get it to work, but we managed to find a few good songs. When we were done eating we did a bit of singing. The last song we sang was YMCA, because that is a very fun song with a dance everyone knows.

After dinner our plan was to go over to Laundry at The Curve to continue the party. Nicholas had to drop Carmeni off at home, so I followed him out of where we were since I knew how to get to The Curve from Kepong. Solo and Joanna were with me. Unfortunately, we were on the wrong lane and missed the flyover to Kepong. I decided to drive on the road under the flyover since I assumed when it ended we would be in Kepong, but this was not the case. After a while we ended up at Batu Caves. We had our eyes peeled for signs, but none of them were to anywhere we wanted to be. Fortunately, Joanna spotted a sign for Petaling Jaya and Damansara. Unfortunately, I missed the exit and we ended up on the Duke highway. We were now very lost. We passed by Zoo Negara and missed another turn to Petaling Jaya and Damansara. I decided to head for KLCC since I could find my way anywhere from there. Once we hit KLCC I went on to Dataran Merdeka, then Bangsar, then finally the Curve. We literally did one big loop of the city before arriving where we wanted to be. I told Joanna I'd buy her a margarita for getting her so lost.

When we arrived one of the clubs was playing "Solo", which I thought was pretty funny considering my present company. We met up with the guys at Laundry and Davinia introduced us to her friend. I think his name was Raj, but it probably wasn't. Anyway, I was told not to order anything since we were going to head upstairs soon, and we did.

We went to this place called Sanctuary. It was pretty cool. It had an ice bar, which was like this big freezer kept at -15 degrees Celsius with a bar in it. One drink would get you ten minutes inside. We didn't go inside, but it was pretty cool to look at it.

Nick got a bottle of whisky for the table and I got a margarita for Jo. She said I should try a sip, so I did. It was bitter and sour and not my thing at all. It was also the only bit of alcohol I drank that night. After that I just drank the free-flow coke that came with the whisky. I drank a lot of that coke.

Joanna, Solo, and I had arrived at 12 o'clock and the club closed at 3. Until then we drank and danced. I didn't do much dancing at first. I did do some dancing in my chair to start with, but after a while some songs that I liked were played and I had to dance to them. Later on I started dancing to any song that I recognized. I got tired as the night went on, but fortunately there were these big cushioned chairs right near us so I sunk into those during the less interesting songs. The music was so loud that I could actually feel it. It shook the cushions until it was almost like being in a massage chair. That was cool.

At around 2 o'clock, Amanda and I went to get something from 7-Eleven to cut the cake with. Amanda took off her boots and walked there barefoot because her feet were killing her. When we got to the 7-Eleven we couldn't find any knives. Amanda considered buying a ruler and cutting the cake with that, but luckily we found some plastic forks so we got those instead.

Back in the club I was a bit worried that I had missed "Your Love in My Drug" since I really like that song and it would've sucked if it had played while I was gone, but it turned out that they never played that. So we sang happy birthday and Davinia cut the cake and fed it to everyone and we danced some more. Near the end of the night some real good songs came on, like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "It's My Life". We also heard "Uptown Girl" and "Girlfriend". Those were fun to dance to. Near closing time they played "I Gotta Feeling" for a really long while. It's a very good song for a club, though, so I can see why they did that. The last song they played was "Sweet Child o' Mine". By the time it was all over I had lost my voice and I was pooped out from all that dancing.

Milan carried Amanda down the stairs and drove her home. We all said our goodbyes and good nights to Davinia. Nick said he'd see me again at Red Box for karaoke. I drove Solo and Joanna home and we took a slightly longer route because we missed an exit, but we weren't really lost. We discussed murder houses and how Joanna was spooked of them.

When I got home I took a shower and went to bed. I think all that dancing was exercise enough, so I didn't do my sit-ups or anything.

All in all it was a pretty good time.