My eldest uncle’s 70th birthday was last week but as he has been in and out of the hospital for a long time it wasn’t really clear if he was going to be home for that to be able to celebrate it. As time reached closer to his birthday it was apparent that he wasn’t able to come home so his daughter mailed a lot of family and friends to see if they could possibly go to the hospital on that day to still have some sort of party for him.

She quickly found out she got more than she anticipated though, after a day or two there were already about 20 people on ‘the list’ wanting to go. :D She mailed everyone again, thanking them for the huge response and added that it might be nice to go to a nearby restaurant afterward to celebrate her mom’s 60th birthday as well, as those 2 birthdays are close together. That way they’d both have a decent birthday party. :)

This was all hush-hush though, no one was to let either of them know this was planned. It was all gonna be a big surprise! Luckily that worked out as planned and when the day arrived there were over 40 people there! Quite a lot more than she expected when she first wrote that email.

We had to be there around 6:30pm and meet up in the big hal of the polyclinic located in the hospital. When we arrived there were already a lot of people. There were so many people that even the big huge table there wasn’t enough to seat everyone. We had to add a few tables. :P

I ate cake and met a lot of family for the first time since I became Julie. I was a bit nervous about that. It took me forever to decide what to wear! I must’ve tried like a dozen shirts before I finally settled for my white army girl t shirt that I love. Thing is that I didn’t wanna overdo the girl part for what is a first time meeting for a lot of them. (so no miniskirts and fishnet stockings, lol!) What was probably even more fun is that I got to kiss everyone now! :D Woot! I wasn’t sure if everyone was gonna be ok with that but I was pleasantly surprised. :)

Naturally some people are still a little confused by it all but I’m sure that most of them realized by now that this is hardly a ‘phase’ I’m going through. I’ve been full-time for about 9 months now and I don’t go around looking like a construction worker in drag either. I do my best to look good and I am noticeably a lot happier now than I’ve ever been before. That is certainly one of the most important things, right? :)

Anyway, we stuck around at the hospital for my uncle’s birthday for a while, he was very touched by it all; that so many people showed up just for him. He doesn’t always realize how special he is to the family but he is. When my grandmother died he became the oldest member of the family, the one everyone looked at.

At like 8:30 we were supposed to head over to the restaurant, a Chinese/Japanese wok restaurant of all things. I’ve never really wokked in my life so that was new to me. This is where my aunt’s birthday was gonna be celebrated, before this point she still had no idea, she thought she was gonna go home with her immediate family and have dinner there. So this was a big surprise for her! :D

It was set up so we’d all pay a fixed amount and then it would simply be all-inclusive. We could eat and drink ’til we dropped or until the kitchen closes, lol. They had a lot of stuff, even a sushi bar! I didn’t try that though, I don’t do very well with raw meats, especially fish. :P I did try a few new things I had never eaten before, I even ate some squid! :D I had to do something to make Sha proud cuz she couldn’t be there. It was very chewy and lacking of flavour to be honest. :P I also had some Chinese bami and a variety of other meats and veggies. It was all very good. :)

Both surprise parties were a huge success and everyone had a lot of fun. :) Here’s a few pics of me there so I finally fulfill my promise of adding more pictures. :P