The big news is that I am now officially and unequivocally middle-aged. I turned 40 on 4 May. I won't carry on here about how I feel about that, but I will say that rather than dreading the event, I actually ended up looking forward to it.
I had debated with myself and others for months about what I should do to mark the occasion: Should I run away by myself to a spa to fast and detox through the magic of enema in an attempt to deny the fact and somehow wind back the clock? Should I head back to Australia and do something there? Should I keep it low-key and have a small dinner in Singapore? A night on a casino ship in international waters? Hide under the bed and hope it goes away?
I soon came to realise that in the year that I had been in Singapore I had actually built up a band of friends and colleagues with whom I really wanted to celebrate my birthday, and whom in turn really wanted to help me celebrate. And so I planned a party.
A few weeks out from the date, I tossed a number of ideas around on where to hold it, how to cater and whether or not there should be a theme. Following a clever suggestion from a friend at work, I settled on a beach party at a bar called Km8, which is on Tanjong Beach on Sentosa Island. Sentosa is "Singapore's Resort Island" and lies just of the coast of mainland Singapore (which is a pretty small island in itself!). Tanjong, like all the beaches on Sentosa, is man-made, but has a great tropical, south-east Asian feel. Km8 is a very casual, laid-back sort of bar that extends out on to the sands of the beach, has a pool and plays very cool music. It all added up to exactly the sort of venue and scene that I felt was right for the night. My birthday fell on the Friday, but so that we could enjoy a few hours of sunlight at the party, I set the date for Saturday 5 May starting at 4pm.
You can check out the Km8 website at http://www.km8.com.sg
A few weeks beforehand, I had lunch with an old friend and colleague of mine from Sydney, Michele, when she was up in Singapore for a few days. We hatched a plan that maybe she and another old friend, Annette, should come up for the party. I was thrilled a little while later to hear that they had booked and would be here for the weekend. Michele's niece, Ali, was also going to come.
For the first time ever, I took a leave day on my birthday. Annette had arrived the evening before and we spent the morning doing some shopping and having lunch before heading out to the airport to pick up Michele and Ali. We all then traipsed off to Raffles Amrita Spa where we met up with Anke and we indulged ourselves with either a 2 hour massage and facial treatment or massage and body-wrap. This was followed by a few Singapore Slings in the Long Bar at Raffles and then some chilli and black pepper crab down at Boat Quay. With all the shopping, spa-ing, slinging and crabbing it turned out to be a very enjoyable, very Singaporean birthday.
After dinner the Aussie girls headed home whilst Anke and I stayed in Boat Quay for a couple more drinks and a boogie. At BQ Bar, the DJ even played "I Will Survive" for me, which had somehow become my theme song of sorts over the previous 8 months when it had been performed on numerous occassions by different bands, supposedly in honour of my "birthday". If it had actually been my birthday on each of those occasions I would be closer to 50 now than 40! We ended up in this Indian/Arabian bar where we shared a hookah (a Turkish water-pipe). This earned me a few interesting "umms", "errs" and "oh riiight"s the next day when I told people the story: all they heard was that Anke and I had shared a "hooker"!
The day of my party and I went out shopping with the girls (they are really good at it) but back home again to get ready and to get to Km8 to be there before the guests. Well, I needn't have bothered rushing as everybody decided they would be fashionably late!
I was a bit worried for a while. but people did eventually start turning up around 5pm, by which time I had a few G&Ts under my belt. I won't bore you any longer with details of the night, except:
- there were about 60 people turn up
- the food was fantastic
- I received lots of wonderful gifts (including a set of golf clubs from my work colleagues (!!!))
- everyone drank a lot
- there was cake
- the cake was rubbed into my face
- I was thrown in the swimming pool in my undies!
- we danced a lot
- I think it was the most fabulous birthday party I've ever been to!
There are way too many photos to post on here, but you can view a slideshow of the lot if you go to http://adobe.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=17tldbsw.y8h3ny8&x=0&y=-gzyeri
It was worthwhile turning 40 for such a fantastic weekend (doesn't mean I'm looking forward to 50 just yet though!!)
No comments:
Post a Comment