Like any other usual night, my Windows Messenger was left online to indicate to the others that I'm available for any conversation. Usually, I would start a conversation with those who are online but that night, most of my friends who logged in had either a "Busy" or an "Away" sign; therefore, I did not dare to greet any of them as I fear I might disturb them.That night was plain quiet (like most other nights), nevertheless, I remained online throughout the night. Not long then, my Messenger beeped and I knew I had an incoming message. Curious to know who was that person who decided to break the silence of my night, I immediately opened the window of the Messenger; to my pleasant surprise, it was my Hong Kee friend Shelley. After a brief exchange of "hi"s and "how are you?", Shelley went straight to her reason for dropping by. She informed me that Calvin was organizing a dinner at a pizza joint called Boston Pizza on the following night; knowing that attending a dinner was way better than staying in my room all night long, I decided to tag along. After expressing her joy for deciding to come along, she then informed me to wait at the apartment lobby at 6pm on the following evening.
As the next evening approached, all of us rendezvous at the apartment's lobby as promised. There were the 5 of us that evening; Calvin, Cindy, Shelley, my roommate and me. Cindy announced at the last minute saying that her Russian friend will be joining us for dinner; from then on, I knew this night wasn't going to be pleasant. I never like the fact of someone new disturbing our quality hang out time together; instead of spending time enforcing our friendship with one another, we will be forced to establish short sentenced and awkward conversations with that new person all for the sake of getting to know that newbie better. When Cindy mentioned that our new guest was a girl, I thought things wouldn't be that bad; however, when she added that she was a Korean Russian, I started dreading again. The Russians over here in our universities are notorious for their unfriendliness, arrogance and their ethnocentrism...especially those female Russians. The fact that this girl was a Korean made me thought that there could be still some hope that she wouldn't screw our dinner up with her arrogance and her sarcasm.
A couple of minutes later, we joined up with Cindy's Russian friend who was waiting for us outside the apartment. She greeted everyone with a "hi" and introduced herself as Irena. Everyone was eager to introduce themselves to her except me as I refused to interact with her fearing that I might get insulted by her typical Russian arrogance. We all then marched together to the bus stop before waiting for a public bus to take us down to downtown. While waiting for the bus to arrive, everyone was busy talking to that Russian girl; I on the other hand kept to myself and just talked to Shelly as I had no interest of knowing that new girl. 15 minutes later, the bus arrived and we immediately boarded the bus without wasting any time eager to reach the pizza joint seeing that all of us were already hungry.
It was not long before we reached the pizza joint. After being ushered to our table by the waitresses at the restaurant, we hung our thick coats on our chair before taking our seats; the girls sat together just like the boys did. As usual, Shelley and Calvin were at it again verbally assaulting each other; just what we need for that night. Instead of dreading the war of words between Shelley and Calvin, all of us were laughing our asses of as we found them to be very humorous. Just like out Thanksgiving dinner, both Shelley and Calvin persuaded me to join either one of them and curse their opposing force in foul Cantonese language. Seeing that I had no intention to be bias, I decided to remain neutral. Cindy paused their verbal war for a moment as she was hungry and she insisted that we began ordering. For that night, we ordered two pizzas and several plates of pastas. Instead of dining individually, all of us decided to share the plates together just like a typical Asian dinner. After getting the waitress to jot down our order, Calvin and Shelly continued their battle of words. In the midst of their conflict, Irena, the Russian girl took the effort to know me. She mentioned that she didn't get my name and she was hoping that I could introduce myself more. Feeling delighted as she had the initiative to know me, I then started introducing myself with my name followed by what am I studying in TRU. Although, she didn't show any signs of arrogance and sarcasm, I didn't really talk much to her that night as I was too busy with Calvin and Shelly. Half an hour later, dinner was served and all of us were impatient to dig in.
That night, we had barbecue chicken pizza and pepperoni and mushroom pizza. Besides that we had 2 plates of chicken wings and 2 plates of different pasta. Before digging in, the girls insisted that we had a group photos with our food. After snapping ourselves a couple of photos, the boys thought they were allowed to sink their teeth on the tempting meal served right under their noses only to be restricted by the girls who desired to take a photo of their dinner; which began to annoyed us guys. Resistantly, we (boys) all objected the girls and immediately dug in while the girls mumbled in anger and annoyance for our impatience. Dinner was awesome; the pizza filled with thick melty cheese, covered with chicken meat and barbecue sauce was very arousing. The pasta with tomato base had us coming back for more, so was the one with the garlic and cheese base. Like both the pizza and the pasta, the chicken wing was tremendous. It didn't take us long to finish dinner since we were hungry and the food was great. After stuffing ourselves full, Shelley suggested having chocolate cheese cake for desert; she then asked who wanted to share with her. After what seems to be an absence of raised hands as everyone was full, Shelley knew that it was impossible to have desert. On the other hand, knowing that desert was a compulsory follow up to Shelley's dinner, I told her that I would join her for desert although I wasn't really a chocolate fan. As the cake was served, I reluctantly took my part of the cake and pretended to enjoy it. The chocolate was so thick and I knew a couple of more spoons would make me sick. Conversely, I told myself to drink lots of water upon reaching home later on. As the both of us finished the last bite of cake, my roommate called for the bill and we all paid for each of our part.
As we left the restaurant after wishing goodbye to the restaurant manager and waitresses, we all headed for the bus stop. Unfortunately for us, Cindy said we missed the next bus to our apartment. She added that the following bus will be an hour later which we couldn't afford to wait that long. That night was cold and we shivered in discomfort; in response to that, Irena suggested that we grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks which was a stone's throw away from where we were. As we reached the coffee house, the warm cozy environment greeted and comforted us, there were not many people that night so we basically had the place to ourselves. Everyone ordered a cup of hot coffee except me. Irena then asked me why I wasn't joining them for coffee; seeing that I didn't like the taste of coffee not to mention their cut throat prices, I told her my reasons. Shelley then suggested there's always the Green Tea frappucino as an alternative to my dislike for coffee. Trying to be adventurous, I decided to try out what Shelley suggested and fortunate for me, I'm glad that I listened to Shelley's suggestion as the Green Tea frappucino was great ( a little sweet though...). After our cup of coffee, we were back into the cold again waiting impatiently for the bus.
Like every other time, Shelley and Calvin were assaulting each other with Cantonese foul words and as usual, the rest of us were laughing ourselves silly. To make things more exciting, I suggested that they both fight instead of verbally thrashing each other. Shelley who knew I was a Muay Thai practitioner seek for my teachings as she wanted to lay the smack down on Calvin. Calvin on the other hand didn't bothered asking me or Cindy (who was also a Muay Thai exponent) since he was confident enough that he could protect himself from a little girl. Surprisingly, Shelley learned the basic stance, hand attacks and leg strikes at a tremendous speed. Equipped with the basics of Thai boxing in less than 10 minutes, Shelley went into her standard fight stance and walked towards Calvin; she was so adorable in her fight stance. Like her, Calvin went into his own fighting stance which was similar to Bruce Lee's one. He even had the Jeet Kune Do yell from Bruce Lee . All of us then shouted "fight" repeatedly to instigate the both of them to rip each other apart and it didn't took long for them to do so.
Calvin and Shelley charged at each other and the second Shelley laid her combo attack I taught her, Calvin had no choice but to retreat. Shelley continued pounding on Calvin violently with more jabs, hooks and knee strikes; I just felt bad for Calvin as he was so helpless in defending himself. Fortunate for Calvin, he managed to pull off a reversal grapple on little Shelley which then turned the table around. Shelley was in a choked up position and Calvin dominated for that round. As the next round continued, the both of them continue charging at each other only to be interrupted by Cindy. The second Calvin started charging, Cindy grabbed his hair and pulled him back. Shocked in horror about Cindy's brutal interruption which nearly forced Calvin to drop hard on his back and maybe break his back, the fight stopped in surprised. Everyone was just shocked with Cindy's unexpected interruption. All of us really had a great time laughing and having fun together until the extent that we even forgotten about the cold and time. Just as the final round between Shelley and Calvin's brawl ended, the bus arrived just in time to take us home.
I guess that was my best night ever since that Thanksgiving dinner I had with them couple of weeks ago. Ever since that unforgettable night together, all of us became closer and we even thought about attending the upcoming Halloween party together. I guess my friend's philosophy was really accurate: as long you got a group of friends together, anything you do with them will never be boring and dull.
Our dinner at Boston Pizza. (From left to right) Shelley, Irena, Cindy, Calvin, my roommate and me
A picture of our dinner...taken by the girls as usual. We had chicken wings, pizzas and pastas. Dinner was great.
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