All that work to see that smile. Totally worth it!
WARNING! Photo heavy post!
Today marks the birthday of the person who makes everything worth it for me; the one who makes my life worth living. The past decade or so of my life had been wonderful thanks to her, and now, she's gonna turn 24 a week ahead of me. Her smile is vindication of the effort I put into preparing her gift; seeing her happy is vindication of the effort I put into working towards a future for myself and hopefully for her as well.
Anyway, before I get all melodramatic, the gifts she was holding was what I had been talking about the past three or so days (this and this, also, yay, I finally got to feature her a little in this blog :D). She actually told me already what she wanted for her birthday, so she already knows what's inside those boxes. Since there no longer is any surprise in the gifts, I decided, hey, why not make the wrapper the surprise! She loves the Game of Thrones (GoT) character Daenerys Targeryen to bits so I decided to wrap the gift with a Targaryen theme. It was an arduous task, but it's for a very special person, so I'd gladly do it again a hundred-fold. I had a fun time wrapping these gifts anyway, as I got to try my hand at origami after a long long time.
As you can see, I did not push through with the more complicated dragon model, opting instead to stick with a simpler one I saw online. Then, after wrapping it in colored paper, I thought the front was too plain so I added a scroll that bears the Targaryen motto "Fire and Blood". Getting the typography right was a bit troublesome as the tip of the Sharpie I was using wasn't exactly "sharp" enough (heh), but I think I did a decent job!
About the color of the wrappers, the red one is obvious enough. Red is a Targaryen color, so that was a no-brainer. But I only had enough red-colored paper for one gift, so I thought, maybe I'd just use green for the other one; dragons are green right? Then I realized, wait, red and green are Christmas colors! I didn't use the left over gift wrappers we have at home specifically because they were all Christmas themed! So I thought, black is the other Targaryen color, but I didn't have black, and if ever I did, it would have been too dark. With no other options left and time running out (I wanted to catch some sleep before 4 or 5 AM), I decided to go with the darkest shade I have, blue. Turns out, Daenerys' outfits in the recent seasons of GoT was the same shade of blue. A really fortunate coincidence if I say so myself XD
After meeting at the Mall of Asia with a common friend, we then headed to the office of her parents in Ayala and waited for them to return from work so we could go to Bonifacio Global City (BGC). She was treating me, her sister and her parents to Wrong Ramen, a "ramen" restaurant in BGC. I put "ramen" in quotes because, as the name sort of implies, their ramen isn't really ramen at all, more like a fusion of sorts of the traditional ramen with experimental ingredients like milk and various spices.
I had their Tonkotsu Ramen, which is noodles in a very rich milky soup with chashu slices on top. It was great, but it was a little too rich for me, so I wasn't able to finish the whole bowl without some help.
She and her sister had the FU Ramen, which is sort of a breakfast style ramen with egg and bacon. It was also amazing and tasty, kinda sinful with all the bacon and other fatty ingredients but it was worth the extra few pounds it might give you I would say.
We also had some other food from the same restaurant. It was kinda expensive (but I wasn't paying so...), but I'd say it's still worth giving a shot. Their food is really good, and the recipes are witty, refreshing and original. We really had a great time at Wrong Ramen.
After the meal, I was able to chat with her mom and dad about work. It was a great opportunity to learn about freelancing from those who had been in the business for quite a long time, and I gleaned a lot of useful insights from what they had to say. I also got to know her parents more. Hopefully I wasn't the only one who was impressed during our little discussion though XD
Finally, we had some dessert, affectionately called the "Poop of the gods". Basically it's Belgian chocolate with a little salt and some seasoning to taste shaped like a piece of... Well... Shit. But what a yummy piece of shit it was! This is probably one of the only times I would use the word "shit" in this blog, and only because it's quite appropriate XD
After eating at Wrong Ramen, we took a quick stop at a Gelato store near Wrong Ramen, and not so soon after, it was time to go home. It had been a truly meaningful and fun day; I got to improve the relationship I had with her family, and she had an awesome birthday celebration. A truly blessed and inspired Thursday it had been indeed.
May your Thursday be just as blessed :)