Eighteen

It's been a while since I've written a personal post like this but yesterday was my birthday and I couldn't think of a better time to post something personal.

So yes, yesterday was my 18th birthday! I couldn't be more excited. Honestly I'm like an 8 year old when it comes to my birthday.

I guess it because all my life, my parents have treated my birthday like it was the biggest deal in the world. I'm not complaining of course. But yes, my dad takes an off day from work every year on the 23rd of December and we will go out to somewhere special and have fun the whole day and eat at my favourite restaurants.

This year, my birthday started at midnight as it always does. Everyone stayed up and my family sang me a happy birthday and then gave me my presents. It was very nice. I got a lot of cool stuff from them.

My dad got me 3 Lush bath bombs and a card saying that my second present was on it's way to Singapore. My mom got me a full makeup set (my first one omg!) and my brother got me an owl backpack.

We went to Food For Thought for breakfast where I had dark chocolate pancakes with mixed berries. The berries were warm haha.

We went home and I watched the final episode of The Newsroom with my dad. Omg I cried. If you haven't seen it yet, the next two GIFs have spoilers so...

We then went to Pasta Brava for dinner. That was awesome.

Tiramisu

Spinach Ravioli

Aglio Olio

Then, I went to No.5 at Emerald Hill with my cousins for my first ever bar drinking session. They wanted to take me out and it was my first time at a bar (obviously) and I had two drinks that they ordered for me because I literally had no idea what on earth I was doing. They ordered some Vodka on rocks with lime thing and another strong drink that I still don't know the name of. 

It was awesome. I had so much fun and by the end of the night, I was quite high. I couldn't really walk straight of stay still. I kept lilting. Everything was just funnier and happier  which was quite interesting. I kept having to pee and every time  I looked at myself at the mirror, I realised that I didn't look like how I usually do. It was weird. 

I got home at like 12.30am and I went to bed at nearly 2am. I had such a great night. I also think I learnt that I don't sleep well with alcohol. I kept waking up. I was up at least 2 or 3 times last night. Once at 5am and I got up and I realised that I was so so hungry. I've never felt like that when I wake up in the middle of the night. It was so weird. I also had a slight headache but thankfully that was all. 

Overall, I had the best birthday. It was so much fun. 

P.S. I apologise if the pictures and GIFs in this post are messy looking. I kept trying and trying to make them seem lovely but it wouldn't work very well. So this is the best I could do. Also it's 2am on Christmas morning but I'm going to set the date as the 24th so I don't have to rewrite the intro and things. 

New Experiences And A Touch Of Social Anxiety

Hello readers! I feel so weird now that I'm not daily blogging. I don't like this feeling... Hmm...

So I decided to write this post because yesterday, I had a great day which was full of new experiences and I wanted to tell you all about it.

So yesterday, my cousin invited me out to a play that was being produced by one of his old school friends. It was called 'The Beaux Stratagem" and it was hilarious and classic and really wonderfully done in my opinion. I was really impressed. I loved how they strung their words together to form something so elaborate and extravagant. The actors were all so confident and loud. It was extremely well put together and I enjoyed myself tremendously. So well done to the cast and crew!

After that, my cousin surprised me by bring me to the Fullerton Bay Hotel. We went up to the Lantern bar. He bought me a Gunner (it's a mocktail that's made up of ginger ale and some other stuff. Overall it was extremely tasty). He had a cocktail drink that was full of mint leaves. I thought his drink tasted 'leafy'.

We just chilled out at the bar for a bit. The view was absolutely spectacular. I can't even describe it properly. You had to be there to see how lovely the city skyline was. In this instance, pictures do not speak a thousand words.

While we were there, my aunt and uncle surprised us. They came along and had drinks with us. Then they took us to Pasta Brava for dinner. Pasta Brava is an Italian restaurant which they frequent very often. Everyone was so nice especially to me because I was the new face at the table.

We had Portobello mushrooms and ravioli for appetisers. I had seafood linguini for my main and we shared a crêpe and a tiramisu for dessert. We had really nice wine too and we did limoncello shots together. It was amazing. It was my first time doing a limoncello shot (or any shot for that matter) so that was an interesting experience. (I would later find out that it made me really tired and that night, I woke up disorientated at 5am but that might not have been because of the shot)

Overall it was a wonderful and amazing day. It was very overwhelming. I've never been to a place where a drink costs 20 bucks. I tried ravioli for the first time. I did my first shot. It was really a lovely experience and I'm glad that I put myself out there and did all this. 

When my cousin first called me to invite me for the play, honestly, the first thing that came to my mind was, "Why me? Did he have no one else better to take?". That was my instinctive reaction to his invite even though I know that my cousin and I love spending time together and that he and I are pretty much siblings. I instinctively assumed that my company was horrible.

I hated that I felt that way. On Saturday, I was very careful when I picked my outfit. I made extra effort and I even did a little something special with my hair. Yet the second I got there, I started to feel ugly and fat. I felt out of place and I had this horrible fear in the pit of my stomach. I don't know where it came from but I know that I was no stranger to it.

I frequently experience this. This almost crippling fear that I look horrible, that I might say the wrong thing, that I might embarrass myself. It's always when I find myself with people that are not in my household. It's why I don't really go out much and why I prefer to stay at home, holed up in my room, typing up what I feel to post on my blog. I struggle with social interaction. Especially one-on-one interactions. 

It didn't matter that it was just my cousin with whom I had grown up with. It didn't matter that I was with my closest aunt and uncle whom with I spend time with every week. I still felt crippled. If I wasn't busy being overwhelmed by everything, I might have started to panic. I don't know. I mean, yesterday was a really lovely day. Yet internally, I just felt so strange and a little tipped on one side, if you know what I mean. 

I hate feeling like that. Like I'm somehow not up to a standard that I think I should be at. A standard which, by the way, is pretty unattainable. I think I've mentioned before that I am my biggest critic. I guess this is a pretty big personal stumbling block for me. I don't know. I'm rambling. 

It's late and I want to sleep more then anything. I've got exciting posts coming up. I got a new camera yesterday too and I will review it once I feel like I know it well enough. So don't forget to subscribe by typing in your email address in the box in the side bar to get an email when I post something!

Love you loads!