You know, Kyleen is always telling me that I need to get out and do more fun stuff. I can see why people have to tell me to do so flat out. Some days I’m so busy worrying about responsible stuff like the mortgage, the condo, etc. that I sometimes forget that I’m only a 27-year-old man: I’ve got youth on my side. I need to get out more. So, when days like yesterday happen, I feel like I’m finally finding a bit of balance that’s so sorely needed in my life.

Well, I left work a few hours early yesterday to make it north of the city. I met Yuk Chen and Raien at a karaoke place. I think it took me a while to get into the groove of things but once I got into it I feel like I really let loose. Now, I’m not claiming to be the best singer out there, but I’m aware I’ve got some grasp of pitch, tone, and timing in my limited range. I feel like one of my saving graces is that I’m familiar with a good library of tunes in my mind. I found that last night the thing that gave me the most trouble was actually singing songs I was familiar with but were actually out of my range. I was stuck trying to figure out whether to go an octave higher or lower, and seeing if I could reach without losing control. Anyway, Raien knows a great deal of songs as well and it was fun dueting with her. Yuk Chen was there more to cheer us on, though I did get her to sing background on one or two songs. I felt fortunate to have Hui join in midway through the session, especially since he made the trek to Markham all the way from Mississauga. He too has a good library in his head which is a great tool. By the end of our 3 hour session, my voice was totally worn out. Despite that, I was kind of on a high. It’s not often I get the chance to rock out like that with friends. It’s awesome.

From there we met with Jenelle and Henrick for hot pot. If you recall, last year when I was at hot pot I ended up with some GI issues. Knowing that, I had a couple of people watching out for me making sure that I wasn’t eating anything horribly undercoked. So, perhaps if you’ve been following along, you may or may not know that bringing all of these people together effectively meant bringing together two separate circles of friends. In that Venn diagram, I’m the overlap–I’m the crux. I’ll be honest and say that that made me a little bit nervous. I mean, there was the chance that the groups would have little in common and the whole night would be frosty. You can imagine my relief when everyone hit it off. You know what? It helped that for a good chunk of the night I was the target for a lot of the jokes. Well, sure, why not? The girls seemed to be having a field day at my expense. That’s OK. It was obvious that it wasn’t done with malice. This is why I say that I’m blessed to have great friends. I know that people care, you know what I mean? It was during hot pot that I was given the epithet of “sweaty dragon,” though I suppose “perspiring dragon” sounds more honourable.

Well, we stayed at the hot pot place for 3 hours. I went through one plate of meat and that was pretty good. As such I went back to the meats table and heaped on more. Unfortunately, I was greedy. I was really struggling with what I had on my plate. By the end I just dumped it all into the pot. At 10 p.m. they were basically trying to get rid of us. They gave us the bill and turned off the heat. Hah!

We all left and hung out at T&T for a while, checking out the Asian goods. Yuk Chen had to leave at this point. You know, among all of the weird goods I would have purchased a couple of snacks, but I was still too full to even consider food. The girls on the other hand were craving desserts. I was just amazed that they could even think about it. I joked that we could go to Kelsey’s if they wanted dessert. I didn’t think they’d actually want to go, but go we did. They kicked us out though because it was too late. Jenelle thought to check Boston Pizza if they’d still take us, at which point she ran to check. I’ve never seen someone run so fast (on a full stomach, no less) for the purposes of dessert. Turns out that yes, BP was able to take us. The girls were so keen on dessert that they insisted all 5 of us order one of those $6 desserts each. There was some balking at the though, and rightfully so. I mean, we were still stuffed with broth and meat. I think we overrode our good senses and proceeded with the plan. Oh GOD, why in the world did we do that? I ordered an apple crisp and felt gross after eating it. Sure, it was awesome, but holy crap. The girls who were so eager before seemed to struggle the most. In the end though everyone finished.

All of that was awesomely exhausting.

Anyway, here are some pics. At the restaurant, we were again joking about the “fresh off the boat” finger poses that Jenelle mentioned last time we all ate together. Hence the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 fingers. Yeah…we really need to stop doing that. Thanks go to Raien for sending me these photos. What a great way to end the year!