Welcome to Quarter Life

Also known as: The Twenty-Fifth Birthday Celebration

I apologize for the late post — as usual, work took over my life and it didn’t stop even during my birthday. It’s kind of stopping now, thank goodness, and I find it kind of strange that it took me up until the end of March to blog about my birthday. Usually I do that on the day itself, or at least, a few days after.

Maybe this is a sign of aging.

Anyway. My 25th birthday started a little early when I met up with one of my best friends, Happy, for a one-on-one girl talk. That’s where I got my first cake of the day, the Starbucks Cake Pop (which was awesome, by the way). I got home before midnight, and then the greetings started pouring in. :)

I stayed awake a little bit more to answer some messages and answer a phone call from Dodge before going to bed. Then the real fun started.

The fun things about birthdays, as far as Facebook is concerned, is that you will get notifications ALL DAY. And it’s fun to see them coming. Sometimes if you leave it long enough, it’s easy to get more than 100+ notifications in a span of a few hours. I don’t know about you, but I find that fascinating.

Anyway, I got to work, but before I could sit down I had to get some breakfast with my gorgeous teammates, Grace, Jana and Joj. The morning was spent greeting, tweeting, and tackling the mountain of work we have (which, sadly, did not stop even if it was my birthday. Pfft), and being proud of my brother who also made the newspaper that day:

I went down to hear mass by lunch time, telling the girls I’ll meet them for lunch at McDonald’s (Double Cheeseburger for my birthday!) and then off to shop for my dinner on Saturday. We had a great lunch, followed by more Starbucks dessert and then went around the mall to look for an outfit.I found a pretty short blue-green dress in RAF, which looked perfect with the red wedges I wanted in VNC. Since I can’t buy books on my birthday for my Lenten fast, shoes and clothes are the next best thing. ;) Thanks to Jana, as always, for being my stylist. ;)

When I got back, the rest of the team were there, and this was waiting on my table:

There was a bouquet of sunflowers on my desk, bought by the people in the Philippines requested by the people in Dubai. Talk about totally brightening my day! They looked so pretty, all wrapped in red. This is the third time I got sunflowers for my birthday — how awesome are my friends?! :) And these are the people from Dubai responsible for this (who had this picture taken just for me, too):

Then my teammates brought out my second cake:

You just have to love my teammates. :)

The rest of the birthday afternoon was spent working, getting another cake from Conti’s (thanks again to Marvs and Cors, and AJ for bringing the cake) calling for food to feed my team, eating, cutting my cakes using a box cutter (yes, we have no knives XD), answering more text messages and receiving and planning to meet my best friend, Toni, for dinner (and because I have no idea how to bring home everything I got in my commute). So he arrives later, bringing Chris, our other “long lost” high school friend ((Long lost = always busy, so we never get to see him)). We had dinner at Stackers and they talked business and I stuffed myself full. :D

I got home and spent the rest of the night with my mom, answering birthday greetings on Facebook (never ending, mehn). It was a long, fun and tiring day, but it was awesome. Talk about feeling loved.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Since this is my 25th birthday, I decided to hold a little dinner the following weekend. Originally, it was supposed to be at our new-old house, but renovation was still ongoing then (till now, actually), so I decided to hold it someplace else. I decided to hold it at Bugsy’s Ortigas, because you know, I’m 25 and it’s probably about time to have a birthday dinner at some kind of bar. With drinks and all.

The thing I realized after setting up the invites is the number of friends I want to invite. Of course I want to invite a lot, but considering budget and space, it was hard to do that! I realized that I couldn’t keep the guests to lower than 20, and these are the people who were all determined to go and not miss out on this night. And there were more that I wanted to invite. How about that. I’m so blessed with friends. :)

And so Saturday night, at Bugsy’s! It was fun. Lots of food, drinks and talks, with me twirling every time someone arrives (thanks to the dress), and the epic Burn Bugsy Burn (video below). We had to move to another location 3 hours later though, especially when I saw my bill. Haha! Talk about the most expensive birthday ever! Not that I really minded, because I figure I’d be spending that much at one time in my life, with the number of people around me, and it’s only once that I turn 25. :)

Again, these people are the awesomest. :)

One of my NaNoWriMo “sons” arrived, too, but we has no picture together. Sadfez. :(

Oh, and I apologize for the blurry pics — I told you I need a new camera.

We stayed at Ortigas up until 2:00am to wait for the moon, which was supposed to be super that night. It wasn’t, but I didn’t mind because like I said a hundred times, my friends are awesome. Even more awesome when some people who had other places to be that night stayed up until the end (yes, Ariel, I’m looking at you :P).

It was an awesome birthday week. What a way to turn 25, yes? I’ve always loved birthdays, and I find that each birthday just becomes more and more awesome as each year goes by. Ergo, more reasons to love birthdays, right? :)

I still have one more celebration to do, with my family, but that has to wait until my dad gets here. Plus, I kind of need to regroup and account. XD

There’s more to my turning 25 that I need to write about (you know, usual realizations and stuff), but I think I’ll reserve that for another post (which, I hope to post tomorrow, before March really ends!). Now, instead, I leave you with the Burn Bugsy Burn video. Here’s the description I posted on Youtube and Facebook:

Birthday shot! According to The Amats Project, Burn Bugsy Burn is “…a fiery mix of sambuca and cinnamon powder that requires you to inhale on some nasty fumes after downing a shot of burning booze. It will literally leave your chest burning. ”

Well it definitely burned alright. Heh. I think this made me terribly tipsy afterward. Never doing this again…except maybe if I get peer pressured into it. Or if it’s free. Or both. :P

Watch it burn and watch me drink it and hear me ask for water while I feel it burn. Haha. It’s not that scary, it’s just really strong, and I remember the alcohol hitting me fast right after I downed that shot. Needless to say, I reached my threshold after that shot. :D

It was fun, though. :)

[youtube RVK5FyHAW9I]

So once again, many, many, many, many THANKS to everyone who shared my birthday week with me. :) Thank you to all who posted greetings on my Facebook wall, who sent me text messages, who called, who visited, who chatted, who made sure I was greeted in every social network and in everywhere I am online, who made an effort, who came to my party (and stayed even if they had to go somewhere else, never mind the fact that the others made it hard to leave, haha! :D) and thought of me as I celebrated this age milestone. :) Who knew turning 25 can be so much fun? Thank you, and I hope the next 25 years (and more!) of my life still include you guys. :)

Here’s to quarter life. :) Cheers!