Past, Present, Permanent

yay. finally after 363 days, my birthday came. we went out for lunch together. "we" being sam, zhiyi, jen, and me. started off the day by meeting sam halfway up the hill of hume ave. somehow he always walks faster than me. anyway, it was about 11 then. then we went to the jurong skating rink to meet jen. and amazingly sam had never seen the rink before. and he was thick enough to tell me that he "always go there when i was small". RIGHT.

then once jen finished her routine i called zhiyi and we headed all the way back to west mall. 7 minutes later we reached bukit batok mrt and zhiyi wasnt there yet. tried to call him again but cannot. then tried to call him again but cannot. then tried to call him again but cannot. WTF! so we decided to go to pastamania and wait for him. and i chose the pepper beef pasta set, while jen and sam chose the bacon and smth and smth pasta set. we were all starving. then tried to call zhiyi again but cannot. so we ordered sam to go wait for him at the mrt station. then tried to call zhiyi again and now finally, can get thru. and he said he was in the toilet, stomachache.
!!!!!
jen was so pissed off. but wadeva. we took his order on the phone, much like mcdonalds. he asked for the bacon and smth and smth pasta set too! then waited a bit more and chatted a bit more. and then we realised that sam was still at the mrt, waiting for someone who wasn't going to the mrt.
!!!!!
but that moment he came back, so we sent him off again, this time to order the food. and he went there and came back almost straight away. and said "what type of pasta do you want?" kind of a pointless question anyway. so he went straight back to the counter and ordered i guess. i dunno, i wasn't looking. then a minute later he came back again!! he said, "pay now", so we had to fork out the money and he made a big mess counting the cash. and the cashiers were looking at him like he was an alien who came from outer space without money. i didn't expect him to make it back to the table alive, so i got quite a surprise when he returned with 4 drinks on a tray, together with the bill.

my set cost me $13.80, with GST. the others cost $13.40. "ouch," my wallet says. the food was served quite fast. the bacon and smth and smth pasta sets came first. followed by the cutlery that sam forgot to take. followed by my pepper beef pasta set. and followed by the man of the match, zhiyi.

so finally, we could all settle down and have lunch. pasta was good. especially together with tabasco sauce. sam had an extra serving of tabasco when zhiyi tried to help him apply the sauce. and funnily, i never liked capsican. or capsicum. or whatever (how the hell do you spell it?). and my plate was full of them! no choice, i tried them. at first they tasted, erm, like capsicum. but after a few spoonfuls they tasted, erm, better. so yeah. i overcame my capsica-phobia. nice present eh?

speaking about presents, lets see what i got today
1. a keychain from hollywood (sam)
2. an ancient coin from china (sam)
3. a sign saying "Nicholas' Parking Only, all others will be towed" (sam)
4. a cotton shirt from Sri Lanka (zhiyi)
5. lots of "happy birthday" greetings (zhiyi x4, sam x2, jen, my sis, my sis, mom, ms neo, shuan)

thank you all for making my day!!

so after that we walked around and round and round in circles, just to kill time. we admired jewellery, inspected the currency rates at the money changer, discussed the difference between indian rupees and sri lankan rupees, lost jen, walked around aimlessly, found jen, went upstairs to the face shop to look for some korean guy (i forgot his name) who was on a poster which was on display but not on display now, went down again because i asked what we were doing upstairs, walked one big circle around the escalator, went up again to walk a bigger circle, then went up to the 3rd floor to walk the same sized circle, then went all the way down again to the entrance of the mall. then we passed the Subway at the entrance, and saw a LPS teacher there whom we all recognise, chatted a bit (amazingly the chatting burned more time than we did by just walking), then jen had to go so the 3 of us left went to get the tickets for: