Nick Turns Twenty

It didn’t seem that long ago since Nick’s last birthday party, but here we are again another year on. Tonight Nick celebrated his 20th birthday and invited a few friends to dine with him at La Porchetta on Lincoln Road. The last time I had eaten there it was still Pizza Hutt, so everything looked a bit different inside. When I arrived, most of them were already seated and we were just waiting on Sam, Bryn and Hailey. The menus were passed around and me being my usual self, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to eat. After scanning over the menu back and forth, I finally settled on the Quattro Gusti pizza, which was a pizza that had four different toppings. I ordered a large pizza, though I didn’t realise how large a ‘large’ was until it was put in front of me by the waiter. Luckily I was hungry by then so I managed to gobble it down… just! Just before we left, Nick was surprised (though somewhat prematurely due to one of the staff members mentioning “candles”) with an ice cream birthday cake! We sang him ‘Happy Birthday’ and divided up the cake before it had melted completely. On the way out, I bumped into a Michelle Lee, an old friend from Rutherford. She was with her friend Aniva, who turned out to be the same girl I met at New Zealand Natural a while ago.

Happy Birthday Nick!

(video)

From left: Me, Carey, Nick, Luke

After dinner, it was back to Nick’s house for a bit of hangin’ and chillin’. Some of the girls arrived later after getting ready, while the rest of us played some pool, darts and listened to music. It was nice to chat up with some friends I hadn’t seen for ages, even though a few of them were a bit tipsy at the time. We sang the birthday song to Nick again, but this time with gifts.

The taxi vans were due to arrive just before 11:30pm to take us into town. Since I wasn’t going to be staying out all night, I decided to drive into the city myself, and Luke came with me too. On the way into town, we saw two breath-testing stops on motorway on-ramps, so the Police were definitely out in numbers tonight! The taxi van we were following stopped just before the viaduct so we needed to find a car park as close as possible. At first I didn’t know where to go and there were cars all over the place, but luckily we didn’t have to search for too long before we found a carpark down at the viaduct opposite the Westin Hotel.

From left back: Luke, Racheal, Steph, Sam, Nick, me, Rosie

The message from friends was that they were at “Provedor”, a bar on the waterfront. It took a couple of misguided instructions from road workers and security guards to finally find our way there, but we got there in the end! The music at the bar was pumping loud and I took my first step into a bar in the city! Over the next hour or so, we had a great time dancing with friends in amongst a crowded pack of randoms. Photos were taken and we even met some other friends from school. When it was approaching 1am we left Provedor to go somehwere else. I’m not sure if anyone knew where that “somewhere else” was at first, so we walked through some streets trying to find another club that was free. One of the clubs had a very long queue waiting outside; I’m not sure what that one was called though.

Tonight was a night of “firsts” for me. It was the first time I had eaten at La Porchetta, the first time I had walked into an alcohol store (but I didn’t buy anything!) and the first time I had gone to town! In other news, my workmate Nikki invited me to her party tonight as well and I was planning to go, even for a short while, but I didn’t manage to get there in time . So I’m really sorry about that Nikki, but I’ve still got your birthday card so I’ll make sure I give it to you when I see you at work next!