Duncan's Birthday

So Friday 10th was Duncan's 37th birthday and to all you slackers out there that forgot to send him a birthday message, you know who you are! I must say, having just arrived in a new country it was pretty quiet (do you feel even worse now?).

I ordered him a birthday cake from the Hilton, which was an exercise in itself - I have come to realise that there is no such thing as a 'simple' cake in SL. The preference here is for an exorbitant cream or butter-cream to cake ratio i.e. 50/50! Which wouldn't appeal overly to DY, so after much to-ing and fro-ing I managed to persuade the pastry chef that a simple carrot cake, no icing and NO chocolate chips (can you imagine?) was the go. Anyway, when I picked it up, it not only had icing, but a birthday message in chocolate - what can you do?

I was planning that if nothing else Dunc would be able to share it with his new work colleagues, but I didn't realise that the UN was having a meeting (all divisions) so that foiled plan a). After a couple of slices we reverted to plan b) which has had unexpectedly positive spin off's. We gave it to the concierge of our building to be shared amongst their staff and the security guards. Well that's done it - we are now the official No.1 couple in the block! Nothing is too much trouble - the plants we've been asking about arrive this week, our broken corkscrew was replaced in an hour - all good stuff. A little birthday cake goes a long way it seems.

So we took ourselves off to dinner at the Gallery Cafe and were joined by Nina, a fairly new arrival herself and really sweet girl. She is half Finnish and half Swiss and is working for WHO whilst living with her partner Jon (an Aussie) who works for UNEP. It was fun if fairly quiet, with everyone tucked up by 11.30.

Just as well we saved the excitement - this weekend was the Colombo Perahera, which conveniently occurs literally out the back of our complex. This is a religious/cultural affair timed with the full moon (have I told you that there's a holiday called a poya day every month for full moon?) and includes elephants dressed up like great sparkly cakes, Kandyan dancers showing off their physical prowess (Kandy is the second largest town in SL), and drums, lots of them. It was akin to a full moon rave without the drugs and Pommie backpackers misbehaving!