One Smokey Birthday

Carlyn's birthday. In order to celebrate this much anticipated festival...er...okay...festival, TAFE Sem. 2 declared Tuesday a public holiday and burned meat. It was our semester break anyway so to hell with declaring it a holiday. Holy day perhaps? Maybe, but that's up to the birthday girl.

Oh ya but the celebration was made early so it ain't the real date.

As for the burned meat part, I will clarify it as barbecue. You know... that activity in which you er... burn meat? Yes that's what I mean. In our case it was more of sausages of all kinds be they long, short, thick or thin. Fishballs and meatballs too, be they round or not so round. Chicken wings, be they bent or forcefully straightened, and not to forget marshmallows, be they more of marsh or mallows.

...and charcoal, be it simply some charred coal.

NEVER underestimate charcoal. They make you cry if you get too much smoke in your eyes. Ouch.

Back to the story. Firstly I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to maneuver my car up the hill to find Shun Mu's beautiful condominium. The heavens must have given me face, because when I parked my car on the slope it did not prove the existence of gravity and slide down. Phew...

Thanks to Kai Wen for his help in trying to locate Shun Mu's secret military base... I mean condominium. Credit for the preparation work goes to my excellent classmates, who seemed to have gotten everything ready. All that was left was to fan the fire. Why fan the fire? Because the fire's HOT! That's why. Don't you fan yourself when you're hot?

Okay okay sorry for the crap. When we finally got the charcoal burning merrily, everything edible was placed above the fire. Some came out just right while some came out like the Yin-Yang symbol. Half black half white. Very interesting.

There is an unspoken rule that you never let the birthday girl see the cake until she is less than 3 meters away from it. Secrecy is vital for surprise after all. Unfortunately the human wall did not work as well as expected, and Carlyn ended up seeing the cake I think 3x3 meters away from it. It might have been further.

We actually spent more than 4 hours at the barbecue pit. Now that I think back I never realised it was so long. Time flies.

And here come 'em photos. Forgive me for the lousy quality of the photos. Me no professional photographer. Hehe.