big birthday bashes

Tonight Chicky and I went to my coworker's son's 1st birthday party. It was held at the Riverside Banquet Hall. His son's birthday party was bigger than my wedding will ever be! There were 350 guest, videographer, photographer, DJ and an open bar. :-) Some people splurge on the strangest things.

So we started off the day late as we had a poker game the night before that lasted till 1am then the 4 of us decided that it was a good time for congee. Late night congee at Green Hut it was then! After Green Hut - Chicky and I were recharged with food so we weren't sleepy anymore. We decided it was Dynasty Warrior time. We didn't turn off the PS2 until 7am. By this time I've been awake for 26 hours straight. I got up at 1pm and relized that we didn't have a gift for Justin. After indulging in some left over lunch and a few rounds of Dynasty Warrior - we headed to the mall in search of a good gift for a 1 year old kid. We ended up at Zellers. Chicky and I were awed by the many interesting toys available to kids these days. I was more interested in the Vtech learning toys while Chicky was into the dragon models. I think we will have conflicting interests in what our children will play with. After 20 minutes of walking the isles - I ended up picking a big Tonka dump truck. If nothing else - Justin can sit on it. It's the most durable toy. The Fisher Price stuff was in the right age range but the plastic looked flimsy.

The birthday party officially started at 6pm. My white coworkers arrived at 5:45pm. I got the "inside" scoop and was told that it would probably start late (Indian time). Chicky and I got there at 7:30pm - after taking a detour to the Riverside Ballroom (where another East Indian function was, we felt silly standing at the door to a wedding with our birthday gift in hand and trying to figure out if I recognized anyone in the room). When we walked into the birthday party - I was blinded by the videographer's light. I saw the camera and saw the receiving line and immediately went to hug my coworker and his wife. The party was pretty fun. It even had a pinata. The theme was circus and clowns so all the tables had balloons and popcorn. We really enjoyed the popcorn machine. The only downside is that dinner didn't actually start till 11pm. By this time everyone was hungry and some of the guests had already left. I basically grabbed my food, gobbled it down and left (within 20 mins). :-) There was so much Indian music that after 6 hours of sitting infront of the speaker - I swear I could sing some of the songs (as the DJ repeated many of the music videos over and over again). What I really like was everyone's clothing - so colourful! Many beautiful fabrics and jewlery too. Makes me want to buy a sari too - if only they were "affordable". :-)