Here's to the birthday girl!!!

It was Rahaa's birthday last Friday and the gang had a dinner in her honour. :) It was a really fun night out! Made me forget that just a while before, I had wanted to crawl into a dark corner and not come out. ;)

Dinner was at a Turkish restaurant, Alaturka, in Arab Street. Great food, fantastic company, one couldn't have asked for more! Plus, the boss of the restaurant (presumably) even handed out little pins of evil eye (it's supposed to ward off evil) to all of us before we adjorned to the shisha chamber. Rahaa, being the birthday girl, also received a pretty turkish amulet/keychain.

Since I got the dinner notice last minute, i.e. Friday afternoon and was supposed to go to Chinatown with a colleague, I invited him along for dinner instead. Christian, my colleague was delightful company as usual! Everyone was sad that he had to leave early (and miss the cake) for a video conference in the office. (on a Friday! and at 9pm at that too! The poor boy... Tsk tsk!) He has been invited to join the gang for future activities, if he's not yet been horrified by our craziness! Hee.

I was supposed to join some colleagues at my boss's place for a horror movie marathon after dinner but cos' I enjoyed myself with the gang so much, I couldn't bear to leave.

Shisha time was definitely a blast! Zan was so funny!!! 'How do I do this???,' as we pass her the 'tube'. The code: suck/inhale and breathe out. All of us were non-smokers ('cept Daryl's a little more experienced thus he was the expert that night) so we were all kinda sua-ku about it and that made for a lot of laughs!!! Even the servers and boss were standing outside the chamber for a while smiling at us! I so have to get a copy of the video Zan took that night! And I was amazed that Zan and Rahaa could expel smoke from their noses (unintentionally) the same time as they blew smoke out of their mouths. But however hard I tried to do that, I couldn't.

We were the last customers in the restaurant by the time we left. I think they were waiting for us to go so they could close shop. Heehee.

Contrary to what I thought, shisha/water pipe smoking is actually as bad as cigarette smoking... Zan has done the research and I had simply read it off her entry. Anyway, here's the link to the article if you are interested.

I want to know when we're hanging out together again!