#Rick25: BirthDAZE x Dinner x Party x Tweetup x Subeez Cafe

My 25th BirthDAZE Tweetup at Subeez Cafe on August 3, 2011 (actual birthday on July 31).

"You get sloppy drunk. I stay whisky neat." – Donald Glover

XXV. 25 years. Last night was my much hyped (not really) birthday dinner, party, and tweetup.



Left: With Vanessa. Middle: With Nick.



I usually avoid birthday celebrations like the plague but you only turn 25 once and I thought it was a milestone worth celebrating. Funny enough, I don't like being the centre of attention.



So I got together with a few friends for an early after work dinner and invited the Twitterverse to come by for drinks and food afterwards. (The lovely Erin Ireland had some of her banana bread delivered to me.)



Left: Colene, Sophia, and Minna. Right: Karra, Angela, and Kristie.



(Bottom, right: With Nicole.) #Rick25 shockingly ended up trending, not only in Vancouver, but across Canada! This blows my mind. How 30 people celebrating my birthday became a trending topic in the country floors me. I wonder what the folks in Fort St. John were thinking.



(Deborah and Colene.) Dennis made fun of me for only having Asian people before Nick and Amy arrived during dinner. Later he remarked on the lack of men for some reason. I was in the company of some of the loveliest, nicest, most beautiful women in the city. Lucky me.



(Linzi and Cyndi.) The best part of last night was connecting so many different people from Twitter and online. I see everyone so much, I often forget not everyone knows each other (in real life). So many people last night finally got to put real life faces to avatars and chat. It was really fun being a connector and everyone getting to know each other.



(Roger and Sophia.) Ironically, I really hate planning things. I like going to them. This is why I try to be understanding and generous covering professional events, because I know how much work it is. So I tried to plan the most casual, easygoing meetup possible.



(Kathy and Angela.) It was a night of random mingling about, food, and (lots of) drinks. I really dig the back section of Subeez with the long table where we could have fun without bothering the rest of the restaurant.



(Angela, Matt, Jay, and Karra.) I had far too many birthday shots from Deborah, Nick, Dennis, Matt, Jay, Vanessa, Angel, Kenneth, and whoever else. It started to blur. Some of them burned. I washed them down in between glasses of white and red wine sangria.



(Right: Sandra.) Thanks to the joint for the fine service. Our waitress was pretty on the ball with the mess of people coming in and out throughout the night.



(Left: May and Dennis. Right: Amy.) It's funny though. I managed to to keep it clean. At the end of the night, our waitress even commented how impressed she was I managed to stay relatively classy and alert downing copious shots.



(With Justine.) She vouched for me when I convinced friends I needed to stagger out my drinks having downed a dozen or so throughout the night



Thanks for all the cards, cream puffs, sparklers, candy, and far too small birthday hat.



 I just want to sincerely thank and show my immense gratitude to everyone so much for not only a great birthday dinner and party but a fantastic year.



Special thanks to Colene, Sophia Cheng, Roger Lam, Dennis Pang, May C., Minna Van, Kristie Yung, Angela Jung, Vanessa Chu, Amy Elderkin, Karra Barron, Nick Routley, Vanessa Tan, Cyndi Hunter, Linzi McGlennon, Deborah So, Nicole Soon, Kathy Ko, Sophia Sengsuriya, Justine Ma, Amy Lai Matt Linsangan, Jay Castro, Sandra Chung, Maurice Li, Chris Jenkins, Angel Ho, Kenneth Mui, and anyone else I forgot to mention for coming out.



I feel so blessed and lucky to have met such wonderful people this past year. I usually hate birthdays, but this was certainly a remarkable one full of amazing people. What a great celebration. Cheers.

Photo | Angela Jung / Colene / Karra Barron / Minna Van