Chief Celebrations 2010: Party With The Gangs

Last year, we told ourself that we would plan this a month in advance, meaning by August we would be planning what we wanted to do for the Chief's birthday celebrations for this year much earlier compared to last year where we got slightly worried that we were late in preparations.

However, come August we were caught up in relocation works and the lack of connectivity, we sort of didn't realize how late we were in planning until SK sent out emails in preparation for William's birthday. By then we got internet up and running, and the Chief had already clued us in regarding the selection of food when it came to venue selection (we thought to take a rest from surprise parties, doing it every year would mean it wouldn't be much of a surprise already, no?).

So much more rushed this year compared to last year, that, on the Chief's actual birthday, we were running around looking for stuff to get in preparation for the parties rather than spending it together (and worse yet, we'd made it sound as if we were only going about our usual routine of going to the gym, getting a haircut, which we did in addition so that we didn't lie)!

We admit, the reason why we harried ourself over preparations were due to last year's Project Blue party where we had helium balloons and all that. It's quite possible that if we never planned for decorations last year we would have just booked a venue, gotten a cake, end of story. Or perhaps not. There's something about planning a party with all the little extras (to the point where it may almost resemble a kid's lawn party) that we like.

Due to a flare-up of allergy attacks, the Chief thought it prudent to avoid certain foods so that it didn't worsen the condition. This meant our choices leaned heavily towards porky places, hence celebration with the bloggers was at Checkers!

Bookings were made in a single phone call for a Saturday, attendance was confirmed, and on Friday we called up to ask if we could bring over the cake a day earlier. A waiter (whose first language wasn't English) answered our call and we sort of gathered that he misunderstood our request, we repeated our request and got a, "Yes, yes, no problem, ok," kind of response, so...ok. That evening we brought over the Secret Recipe White Chocolate Macadamia cake over to Checkers, and...yes, the waiter did misunderstood, thinking we wanted to have the party on Friday instead 'cos we saw the tables set out for 10 upon our arrival.

Thankfully that problem was settled without a fuss, and come Saturday went well!

Then came the following weekend (this is the first year where the Chief's birthday parties were celebrated on different weeks rather than the previous years where it was done on different days on the same weekend), where we hoped the Chief's allergies were subsiding, as the venue was at Oriental Banquet, Section 17 with the TTDI gang. The possibility of shellfish was worrying. The venue was kept a surprise from the Chief, who kept asking if we could change the venue to somewhere like Chan Char Teng at SS2 (where we could also order the giant milk tea meant for birthdays!). We kept mum and just drove.

The only concern we had with Oriental Banquet was that when we went over to make our reservations, we were informed that there would be a wedding celebration going on at the same time. We also had a couple of phone calls from them and a fax of their menu specials, advising that if we could, we should preorder our meals first. Since it involved a number of people, we didn't preorder and hoped for the best.

Turns out that Oriental Banquet had plenty of pleasant surprises for us! We got ourselves a room with a waitress to tend to our every need; instead of going for their set menus, we ordered ala carte dishes, and those were served at impressive speeds (we think we didn't wait more than 15 minutes before the food started coming in!) especially since a wedding dinner was going on outside; and the room was equipped with a karaoke machine and mikes!

Cor. Admittedly we didn't expect more than a round table on the first floor, and we were impressed with what we got! Oriental Banquet would be a nice place to go to again for celebrations.

After dinner at the Oriental Banquet, it was off to...Chan Char Teng at SS2 after all. Heh. Because not a single one of us had ever tried the giant birthday Milk Tea before! To qualify we needed to order it three days before or after the birth date (or on the actual day itself) and we needed to order at least RM30 of food and/or drinks. There was over 10 of us, but there was more than enough milk tea to go around as some were lactose intolerant (like yours truly) or had too many drinks already.

Big thank you to everyone who could make it for the parties! Here's to more to come, and that we plan them much earlier! With balloons! And confetti! Probably a pinata!