Woo... Thank You Dinner only ended at about 11.30 pm last night; that's late. In comparison, last year's dinner at the Orchard Meridien ended at 10-plus. Although I suppose that's because last year's VIPs, the then Dean of Arts, Vincent Ooi, and one of the Vice-Deans who was with him, didn't turn up one and a half hours late. -_-

Tim, Yaozhong, Steven, and both Ivans even um... "dressed up" for the occasion. Really. They rented costumes.

Tim and Ivan Chen dressed as Roman gladiators (Tim complained of the "armor" causing chafing under his armpits; he said that he knew then why the Trojans lost. -_-||); Steven and Yaozhong dressed in those very simple blue, one-piece robes that men in China would wear in the past (you know, the type you always see the commoners wear in Chinese drama serials; apparently, Steven wanted to rent the "long pao", the robes embroidered with dragons which only emperors were allowed to wear, but it was too expensive. Heehee.); now guess what my dear Ivan came dressed as.

He rented a 70s' kind of suit; think John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. White, with tiny metal studs and beads and costume jewellery; long-sleeved top with flared cuffs and a wide, low neck, and flared pants with gold trim around the ends of the pant legs. And to top it off, reflector shades (Ray-Bans, I'm telling you) and a large brown afro wig.

I was somewhat mollified. :P But it suited him. I sometimes think that my dearie should've been born in the 70s.

But just half an hour before the dinner was supposed to start (at 7 pm), the headache that I'd had the day before came back, and later, I realised that it was the start of a fever. Very bad; my hands were cold (not entirely because of the air-conditioning) and my face was warm, which is what always happens to me when I have a fever.

So as it turns out, I ended up not eating very much due to a lack of appetite; thank you Chong Han and dear Yanyan for your concern, though. :) Chongy, if you say I'm lucky to have a nice boy like Ivan, then Shuyi's just as lucky to have someone like you. :D

Gift exchange finally came around; I gave Guanjie a pen. Was somewhat embarrassed coz I didn't have the time to wrap it, but it's nothing to be sniffed at: a Cross pen from their Ion range. The pens come in a lanyard set, coz the pen can be attached to it, and the pen comes out when you slide the two sides of the pen apart. I have one myself, and the sliding thing about the pen entertained my for quite a while. But that's just me. I take more pleasure than is normal in some of the simplest things in life; I don't know why. :D

And Guanjie got me a book! "The Five People You Meet In Heaven" by Mitch Albom; I've wanted that book for ages! Have already started reading it today and I'm one-third of the way through it. Now if only I read my readings that fast. :P

At the end, Steven gave all the 25th MC girls a pink rose each; lovely little things; mine's sitting in a vase on my bathroom countertop at the moment. :) Ivan waited with me for my mum to come pick me up since he decided that he was going to stay over after all, and there was a very amusing 15 minutes when my mum decided that she didn't mind sending Ivan home (all the way to Tampines) and she kept wanting to do so, even though I told her that he wanted to stay over. Eventually, Ivan personally talked her out of it, heehee.

As for today: went to Sharifah's house to do the tutorial assignment for Soci of Food: cooking. :D

We decided in the end to cook fish & chips, partly because we were lazy and because our group had a lot of "restrictions": Sharifah, being Muslim, can't eat pork; Jialing, being Buddhist, can't eat beef; and Jialing and I are both somewhat against spicy food.

Was fun covering the dory fish fillets in breadcrumbs and frying them, although I'm not sure the meal was entirely healthy; we deep-fried the fish and fries, after all. But we did leave them on paper towels to soak up some of the oil. Jialing and I were both somewhat traumatised at the amount of oil that Sharifah poured into the frying pan when we started. Seriously, I've never seen that much oil in a pan before. Was slightly nauseating.

And our food did taste pretty good. :D

Meanwhile, my two group members have enlightened me as to the fact that there is an essay for Soci of Food... which just adds to the number of term papers I have to do: the number now stands at four, and two of them have to be at least 10 pages long. -_-

So... I probably should get cracking and stop wasting my time here.