It started off in Manila last week, when our AusAID partner took us out for cocktails at a nearby hotel to celebrate my birthday. It was super hot and sticky - even at 7pm, and kind of rainy, so we all had our umbrellas from the hotel. I'd seen our destination hotel that morning on our way to the embassy, so I knew it wasn't far. However, it was kitty corner from our block on a street pedestrians are not allowed to cross because there's 6+ lanes of Manila traffic. So there were a lot of underground tunnels and wandering around and asking for directions. Basically we could see it for 20 minutes before we actually found the door. I was getting pretty hot, sticky and cranky by that time. Then we walked into the Peninsula Hotel and I immediately forgot to be cranky. The lobby was cool, astonishingly beautiful, and a string ensemble was playing in the balcony. I kid you not. Simply another world.
The we went through the lobby to the Salon de Ning and again - unbelievable. Every room in the place had a different theme - and they were all amazing. We started out in a room that had a giant King Kong looking through the windows into the room, which was modeled like the cockpit of a Hindenburg style airship. If you look closely, you can see KK on the wall behind us in the picture.
The waitstaff (who were dressed in uniforms a bit reminiscent of the original Star Trek) brought us snacks and cocktails. They brought me a tiny birthday cake, with candles, that we all shared (even though it wasn't actually my birthday day - that would NEVER happen in the US). When we drifted out to listen to the fantastic singer and her jazz ensemble, which included a marimba player, they took our umbrellas and stashed them behind the bar. We took pictures in all the different rooms, cheered for the jazz ensemble and then danced for hours to the DJ that followed. We had planned to go out for dinner after the cocktails, but we forgot.On my actual birthday, I had to work a ten hour day, which was kind of crappy. But Janet, my boss, made sure I got several presents during the day. I'd made the mistake during the Manila trip of revealing how much I'd spent on my latest moleskine notebook. It caused such shock and horror among our team that it got mentioned every time I got out a notebook. "Is that the expensive one?" And if I answered no, then it was "Oh, so this isn't good enough for the expensive notebook?" Etc., etc. So for my birthday, I first got a tiny little book shaped notebook. Then when we were having afternoon tea at the office, I got a full size beautiful cloth bound notebook. Some enterprising soul had written over the actual price to make it one dollar more than my previous "most expensive ever" notebook. John Hattie was at tea and said, "Oh no, it still has the price on it!" Tim (second from right in the photo and our right hand man at CPE), who was in on the whole thing, informed him that it was part of the present. And later that afternoon I got a tiny heart shaped notebook. Oh, and beautiful flowers from Jay, who credited Lucienne (whom he's never met, but apparently recruited via fb) with the assist.
Friday night, at the suggestion of Tim and Janet, I invited a bunch of folks out for drinks after work at the Croft Institute, which is a cocktail bar. It's tucked in the depths of one of Melbourne's "laneways" which is Australian for "alleys with excessive amounts of graffiti." It's so far back down the laneway that the bunch from work that I was with agreed we were glad we were arriving in daylight and with a group.
Croft Institute is all about the test tubes and beakers and drinks that come with syringes in them. You just tell the barkeeps what you like in a cocktail and they make you one. For instance, Lucienne went to the bar and said, "I want a birthday cocktail for my friend." The result was a tall glass with blueberries, strawberries, lemon peel, a giant branch off a mint plant and a significant amount of alcohol. It was AMAZING. Which is pretty much the theme of the night, mostly because I was in the company of a bunch of friends, none of whom I knew before last November, the drinks were delicious, everyone seemed to have a good time, we closed the night out with souvlaki at a place called Stalactites, which actually had stalactites on the ceiling, and I managed to get the birthday flowers home on my bike, arriving at 3:22 am.
So I was laying in bed Saturday morning, sleeping in, thinking about getting up to go to a Tulip festival with Lucienne and some of her dragon boating pals, being surprised I didn't feel worse after 7+ hours at a cocktail bar, and reflecting on my ridiculously fabulous life. I got up, showered, and checked facebook while I was eating breakfast, and my sister Jean had this link posted on her page (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/26/jimmy-fallon-joins-sesame-street-gang-to-sing-shows-theme-song-on-classroom-instruments_n_3993133.html). The tag line sums up the video with "it may be one of the happiest things ever recorded in human history." The song pretty much sings how I feel about my meaning of life birthday.
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