baps' birthday party

We celebrated Baps' birthday tonight in the private function room at Pasha's restaurant, a Turkish restaurant in Newtown featuring a weekend belly dancer. Our young Turkish waiter was quite shy and unassuming, so we were surprised to see just how sexy a dancer he was when the music took hold of him.

There were twelve of us - some like me who'd known Baps for many years, some who'd known her a few months in Sydney, right down to one guy who met her last weekend. For that reason the birthday girl planned a 'getting to know you' game with questions. (Scroll down past the belly ring pics.)

The cake was a delectable chocolate mudcake. Our hostess, who by then had polished off several white Sambuca shots, insisted that each one of us take a turn at cutting the cake and making our own wish. Never one to pass up a wish, I wished for...oh wait, can't tell you that!

Baps is quite into belly rings at the moment, so I gave her a dangly one with pink cubic zirconia hearts. I couldn't get a close enough pic, but if you imagine a belly ring like picture no.1 below, with one round stone and three pink hearts, similar to no.2 except biggest to smallest, so four stones in all.

1. 2.

Met a guy who makes wedding videos for a living. He makes around $10,000 in a weekend doing this. Apparently it works like this: in countries like the US where the film industry is huge, guys with good filmmaking/editing skills don't touch wedding videos - it's beneath them. In Australia, where the film industry is relatively small, these guys are making wedding videos because there's not enough work around. Consequently, he gets flown places (India, Fiji, Kenya) to take wedding videos while earning heaps doing it. Sweeeeet gig!

All in all, a great party. Good conversation, good food, good music - all the right ingredients.