Viet God Turns 30

I turned 30 yesterday. It was such a special day for me. Lots of friends spent their time coming to my house to help me prepare for the party and then even more friends came to join the party in the evening. My party started at 6.30 but I don't know when it finished because I drank so much beer but I think it was about 3am!

I spent about five hours organizing the flowers from 12am to 2.30 am, then in the morning from 9.00 am to 12.30pm. My friend Mark, helped me to cooked steamed vegetables with his own special dressing recipe, three different curries, two vegetarian including pumpkin curry, potato and eggplant curry and a beef curry. My colleagues from Wild Rice restaurant helped me to prepare lots of fried prawns with chili and lemongrass, ground prawn and cashew nut fried spring rolls, deep fried prawn roll with pork, fresh spring rolls, fresh vegetarian spring rolls, mango salad, mixed salad, stewed beef done in the Hanoi style" Sot Vang", crispy fried squid, mushroom and tofu in clay pot and pan-fried young tofu and bread.

Tiger draught was served for everyone even though all my friends brought their own drinks because it was a BYO party. People had to dress to impress as anything starting with "T" and most of my friends were dressed up with "T" and they looked fantastic. I dressed up as a teacher as I have a T-shirt with words written on it about being a teacher. People dressed as Christmas tinsel, a terrorist, a turtle, a tea bag, a tourist, a tiger family, and even Tin Tin...

After the gifts were opened, my colleagues brought out a surprising birthday cake. With all the lights switched off, everyone sang Happy Birthday and I almost cried with happiness. I still can't believe that I recieved so many gifts and all of them are so special and beautiful. Everyone seemed so nice to me and I hope everyone had a nice evening.

Thanks everyone who came or couldn’t come to my party to help me turn a very OLD 30! Thanks also for supporting me at work and in life, in general. Thanks to my family who remembered my birthday, even though they made me crazy calling me so that I had to run up and down the stairs to answer the phone. It was such fun.