Xmas 2007 celebrations part 1

My very first Christmas, to be spent in Australia... and thanks to all my frens, that this Christmas though was spent overseas, was not alone at all. The first of the trilogy of xmas celebration was on the 23rd Dec, where Cat had organised a xmas party at her den. It was a potluck event with gift exchanges etc, and so we were supposed to bring food and a present for exchange. For me, it's pretty simple since I'm pretty much a lazy guy! lol... food - potato, egg and bacon salad from Coles, while present is even much simpler! LOL... a $10 gift cards from Coles! yeah... don't need to waste my time and effort to think of what to buy, and the receiver can use the money to buy whatever they wanted.

So, the party was supposed to start at 7pm, but as expected... people were late and started at around 8.30pm? Think Cat expected this as well, and thus stated the time as 7pm so that by the time the late comers arrived, it will be just nice in terms of timing. LOL... anyway, there were loads of food from turkey by Cat and Weisheng, to Weisheng's shepherd pie, to ham, chicken, fried rice, bee hoon, chicken wings etc etc by the rest of the folks. Heard from Cat and Weisheng that they had tried cooking a chicken using the recipe for turkey, and it was a total flop - somehow the sauce that was supposed to be sipped and taken in by the meat went through the meat, and mix with the herb/stuffing in the chicken and totally wasted the chicken. But surprisingly, their turkey was pretty well done for a first-timer... near perfect I would say, 'cept that some part of the meat are still pretty dry and not succulent enough. Prolly it wasn't meant to be?

After the marvelous food, we just mixed around, gave Khoon a bday surprise and play some games to get to know each other's name etc... pretty stressing as the person who can't said out the name of another will have to finish up a portion of the food e.g. brownie as 'punishment'! lol... And along the way, some people have to leave first as they had work the next morning, and so we proceeded to exchange our present. Well, we had previously tagged our presents with a tag that contains half of a unique xmas song's name, and put another tag with the other half of the name into a box. So, we drew from the box a tag and match it with the pool of presents using the tag... and we were supposed to guess who bought the present as well. Well, I got myself quite a nice pen holder that somehow resembles a canon facing upwards! lol... and well.. didn't really manage to guess who got me the present, and thus ended up eating some chicken as forfeit! Oh well.. I don't mind.. lol.. quite yummy! Ended up that Sherwin was the one who gave me the present!

We spend the rest of the night playing games like mafia... lol.. Mafia is always such a fun game... people will always have lotsa stuffs to discuss about it, about how we play the game etc.. and we had 3 games of mafia excluding the trial run.. and ended up me being one of the mafia thrice. But sadly, mafia lost all 3 games to the civilians! oh well.. it's just a game.. Played throughout the night till 5+ in the morning till when the sun had risen... and subsequently we went our separate ways back home...

Thanks Cat for organising and the invite! Really good to have frens around and having food and fun during xmas... ur xmas party is forever immortalised in my blog! lol...