It was Fiona's birthday on Tuesday, so to celebrate, we decided to have a bit of a party and then go to one of the Union parties called Population, which was having a Noughties themed night (as in, music from 2000-2010. Avril Lavigne was on the poster, so we had high expectations!). I went to Meadowhall shopping centre in the afternoon with Fiona and Elizabeth, kind of to look for something to wear, but also just for some retail therapy. We ended up walking around for about four straight hours. It was an intense shopping trip. Then we came home, had some dinner, and prepped for the party.
I'm going to be honest at this point, because I don't really remember all of this night. People started getting to our flat at about 8.30, and I was playing drinking games with a few people - and I've learned that they tend to be one of the things that send me over the edge. I also found out that my friend Magnus had, for some reason, thought I was Canadian for the entire time that we'd known each other... a fact that was made funnier because I was wearing my ANU hoodie at the time. After that, it starts getting hazy. There were a lot of people there, and at about 9.30 our house mentors showed up and said that the party had to be finished by 11pm for sound reasons. We agreed, and then carried on. Karsten had made some sort of concoction that tasted amazing, but was way more potent than it looked. It had cream, vodka, some sort of schnapps, and perhaps a few other ingredients. Shannon said it looked like pancake batter, but it tasted truly delightful, and many people shared in its wonderful effects.
I think it was about 11.30 by the time we headed off for the club, where I think you can get a fair picture of the night through my sent and draft text messages, which include the gems "Your butt just texted me", "Omg I'm so lost without you kids!", "Tequila!", and my personal favourite, "I kind of just want to go home BECAUSE I'M SO HUNGRY". A lot of these are in my drafts, because the music was so loud that we couldn't hear what anyone was saying. Unfortunately, the music wasn't quite what I was expecting. They played "Get Low" (the Flo Rida version) while I was at the bar at one point, but that song doesn't feel like true noughties to me. They did play "Crazy In Love" though, which was a lot of fun.
Astrid and I ended up walking around looking for a way to get food for ages, then found that we couldn't get food and then come back in to the Union, so we left at maybe 1.45. I had to negotiate with the man in the coat check, because I'd misplaced my tag and had to describe my coat in close detail, which was fun. Then Astrid and I decided to walk back, and get a kebab on the way. After we received our food (and learned the term "drunchies", or drunk munchies), I received a text from Patrick saying that he'd had a similar idea to get food and was not that far away from us. Patrick and Astrid ended up heading home together and I walked back with Karsten and Akash, who'd joined in on the drunchies expedition. All in all, it was a solid night... or so I thought until the next morning, when I was more parched than I've ever been in my entire life, had the events of the previous nights come back to me in installments and couldn't get the taste of kebab out of my mouth until mid-afternoon. I couldn't feel too sorry for myself though, because it was all self-inflicted - and really, I could have felt worse!
To continue on with Fiona's birthday celebrations, a group of us went to an African restaurant called UK Mama for dinner on the Tuesday night. The only reason we picked this restaurant was because a lot of us pass it every day on our way to Uni, and were all intrigued. Fiona had arranged for us to have the banquet option, because apparently that meant that we'd all get our food faster than if we ordered off the menu. We made the booking for 7.30, thinking that we'd all be home by about 10.30 and could pour our sleep-deprived selves into bed and get some sleep. However, the restaurant had different plans for us.
We sat and chatted for a while, until we realised we'd been there for ages and still hadn't seen the entrees. We did have a couple of gem conversations though, especially when we (the Australians - mostly Fiona, Shane and myself) got into a discussion over the pronunciation of the letter 'z' with the Americans. My favourite part went like this:
Elizabeth: So does that mean you say 'zeh-bra' instead of 'zee-bra'?
Maddie: Yep. Zebra.
Joey: Do you say zedlophone?
Maddie: What?
Elizabeth: Joey, do you mean xylophone?
Joey: Zedlophone. Zeelophone. You know.
Maddie: Isn't xylophone spelled with an 'x'?
...
Joey: Oh, yeah.
There was also a moment where Astrid said that four Americans had been murdered by pirates, which was misheard by both Elizabeth and myself. Elizabeth thought that Astrid had said her parents were killed by Americans, and couldn't understand why Astrid was so happy to hang out with everyone after going through something like that. I thought she said that four Americans were killed by parrots, and then was trying to figure out if it was murder if animals were the killers. I did have a rather amusing picture in my head of giant, murderous tropical parrots. Gotta love that language barrier!
We were all getting quite hungry (and complaining a fair bit to each other, if I'm honest!), until FINALLY, at closer to 9pm, the waiter brought us out our heated plates for the entrees. Patrick thought that the hot plate thing was one of the weirdest things he'd ever seen, but a few of us explained that hot plates means the food stays warmer for longer. Which is usually true, except that by the time everyone had their plates, mine was cold. And here's the real kicker: the entree mostly consisted of salad, which does not generally mix with hot plates. But we could deal, because by then I'm pretty sure people were starting to consider either cannibalism or going to the takeaway next door. We worked our way through the salad - as well as a couple of other dishes that included grilled banana and some unidentifiable lumps of stuff that I'm assuming was similar to chickpeas, but with the texture of sand and the flavour of soup. Lovely.
About an hour after our entrees had made their appearance, our mains made their way to the table. And if we'd been complaining about there not being enough food earlier, all of a sudden we were faced with an abundance and nowhere near enough room - either on the table or in our stomachs! I enjoyed most of the dishes, which were mostly curry-type dishes made with a bunch of different meats including mutton, beef, chicken, fish, lamb as well as some vegetarian dishes. My favourite was these potato dumpling-type things, which were absolutely lovely. By the end, all my food had mixed together, and it was really nice. I'm a bit of a curry nut though, so maybe that's why I liked it so much.
It wasn't long before we were absolutely stuffed full of food. The waiter put all the leftovers into some takeaway containers for us to have later, and we were told dessert was on its way. The chef/owner even came out and introduced himself to "Princess" Fiona, and wished her a happy birthday. Just before 11pm, they turned off the lights, turned up Stevie Wonder's version of "Happy Birthday", and brought out our dessert, which was a huge pile of cake and ice cream. I really liked it, but then I'm a dessert fiend and not particularly fussy which form it comes in! The overall result though looked like if you gave a couple of kids some cake, ice cream, fruit and candles and told them to go nuts. It was actually a pile, which I thought was kind of fun. After that, the chef/owner gave Fi some chocolates and a rose, which was a nice touch.
We were just about to ask for the bill and head home when all of a sudden, the owner/chef reappeared, this time wearing more traditional African dress, and distributed a bunch of hand drums and some sort of xylophone. We kind of hit them for a while, and then just when we were starting to get bored, the man reappeared and taught us a couple of drumming rhythms. I felt a little bit sorry for the couple in the corner of the restaurant (who were the only other people left in there by this point) because they looked like they'd been after a romantic dinner, and instead, there were twelve Uni students banging drums quite loudly. It was really fun though, and we sounded quite good!
The last one that the man taught us moved beyond easy drum playing and into multitasking territory, where we had to chant as well as drum to a 'joyful, celbration beat'. The man started us off by sending a summons to every single country that he could think of, starting with countries in Africa, across Australia, America, Canada, some of Asia and Europe, before heading into the actual song. We were all quite into it (and sounding pretty good, if I do say so myself!), and then ended up yelling out the chant to each other. The chant went something like this, with the man asking the questions and us yelling the answers:
Who is the best?
Fiona is the best!
Who is the best?
Fiona is the best!
Tell me why?
She has the voice,
She has the beat,
She is the best!
And repeat. Pretty sure we didn't hurt Fiona's ego any! It really was a lot of fun though. We ended up paying and heading home a little after midnight. So much for our early night... but really, it was so unexpected and fun that it was totally worth it!
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