The Birthday Balinese Surprise

- September 28, 2013, Saturday.

- I couldn't miss a birthday without spending it (earlier, on the day itself, or a bit late) with these two friends. Marga, Clarisse, and have been a trio for 9 years now, and I can't believe how far we've gone and how much we've experienced together.

- I spent my 3-days-late birthday celebration with them at Italiannis Lucky Chinatown, and instead of them surprising me with anything, I was the one who surprised them. I brought out my small speaker and (jurassic-but-still-good-to-go) iPod and played some Balinese gamelan, swooshed out a fan, and started to do a bit of legong. I wore my embroidered-batik Indonesian shirt, adorned with a wayang-golek-like pendant to make it more Indonesian.

- While dancing around, I bought out a batik cloth wrapped around something, and slowly untied the batik in a  dance-y manner. The wrapped batik looked like a chicken's foot, according to Clarisse. After unwrapping the "chicken foot," Marga and Clarisse beheld their eyes on two violet scrolls, each secured by an orange ribbon. Both of them laughed as they were reminded of the show "Survivor."  The two scrolls contained the initial plans for our Bali trip next year, which I have been working on for the past 2 days.

Trying to do legong.

The "chicken foot" batik wrap.

2 violet scrolls.

- The three of us decided to go to Bali a few months ago. We had the mishap of me booking my ticket first, but not being able to book tickets for both of them until 2-3 months later; it had something to do with Cebu Pacific's promo fare, and at first I was the only one who got booked because the promo fare for that travel period only had one more slot for me, and had to wait until September when another promo for Bali came up. I had booked out hotel, and thought of stuff to do and places to go in Bali. I presented my initial plans to them and they became more excited for the trip.

There you go!!

- We spent the rest of the night eating Italian food, and had dessert at Mr. Bean, a soya bean store. I haven't consumed any Mr. Bean product since Chinese New Year earlier this year, because it caused my diarrhea back then. Well, at least it didn't give me diarrhea now. (Their stuff is actually yummy, as long as they don't give people diarrhea.)

- After going home, I was just in time to watch the Miss World 2014 pageant, which coincidentally took place in Bali, and where Miss World Philippines Megan Young was coronated with the title. As for me, Margarette, and Clarisse, we had our bit of Bali happiness too, together with the rest of the Philippines.