First Published August 14, 2005 www.travelblog.org/bloggers/gypsygal
SINGAPORE —I love parties! I love it that I can use it as one of my many justifications to break my diet, binging on wine, vodka, cheese, greasy onion rings and sugar-loaded pastries, without ever thinking about calories. (Because I tend to put weight easily) I also love hosting parties – organizing it, putting out invites, cooking and just chatting with guests.
This may be because I grew up in a family who are sooooo into parties. In Tondo, Manila during the fiesta in honor of the Santo Nino (the Infant Jesus) – which is held mid-January, my parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins and household help will all pitch in to prepare food for more than 50 guests who come in and out of my lola’s house. Some of my titas and household help will be in the kitchen whipping up Filipino fare like mechado, kare kare and dinuguan. My uncles will be outside roasting pig, while one of my aunts or uncles or cousins are entertaining the guests, making sure that they’re comfortable, well-fed, and with the help of bottles of icecold San Miguel beer, “well-drunk.”
At the lobby of Scarlet Hotel
A Marilyn Monroe moment with the DJ Commodities Babes. From left -Feiwen, Glenys, Sha and Prime
And theres always someone snapping pictures ( my mom is one of them, a dedicated shutterbug and scrapbooker) making sure that all the happy faces, the yummy food and the noise will be preserved in posterity thanks to rolls and rolls of film…
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So I had parties galore , and I had fun, and I had wine and cake and cheese, I took pics , chat the whole night, and listened to some music … and the pics uploaded here just proves how much fun I had!
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First in the list, Tita Beth’s birthday party in Windows Café at Club Street (a bar and restaurant row located at Singapore’s CBD area) held Aug 2, Tuesday night, organized by the FLAG – a social club of Singapore-based Filipina professionals. ‘Ta Beth, who’s been in Singapore for over a decade and now holds a Singapore passport, is FLAG’s founding president.
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Thursday night, August 4, I went with my fellow reporters in the Dow Jones Commodities Team in Singapore for a farewell dinner at the Breeze Cafe in Scarlet Hotel (also in Club St). We had some drinks (I had wine, the three babes had fruit juice) and finger food and massive dose of girl talk!
Later we went to lobby of the hotel, wherein I insisted that we absolutely need to have our picture taken seated at the lobby’s sofa. It’s soooo Marilyn Monroe, I told them.
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August 5 was my last day in DJ. I had another farewell dinner with the commods team in Singapore, but this time, our editor joined the dinner. We went to Rang Mahal, a splashy North Indian resto at Pan Pacific hotel. It was here that they gave me my farewell gift-voucher for Nike. A week later, I used the voucher to buy a pair of trekking sneakers.
