i am 28. sob sob.

yesterday we celebrated my 28th birthday. i feel old....

my teacher surprised me with a birthday cake and a birthday song at about 4.50pm. it was so sweet of the school to celebrate my birthday. :)

that happened in the middle of my sympathy tribute arrangement. talk about irony!

when i went back to the hotel, chris wasn't back from his 'last minute gift shopping' yet. but when he got back later at almost 6, he presented me with a birthday song and a small cupcake. really cute.

then we went off on our bus journey to South Coast plaza for a nice dinner. we were deciding on which italian restaurant to go to and decided to check out the options there.

when we reached, we were tempted to have dinner at Maggiano's, a beautiful little Italian restaurant just outside South Coast Plaza. The interior was beautiful and very authentically decorated but the place was filled with people and we were afraid we would have a long wait for the food so we decided to go to the other italian restaurant he found at the other side near Crate & Barrel (the most awesome home furnishing shop in USA!). So we went there to eat, that was the wrong choice.

The restaurant is called Nello Cucina. The service was okay and the bread was ok. The sad thing started when the minestrone soup came late. The entrees came right after we had our fourth spoon of soup.

The angel hair pasta dish was a disappointment simply because I would expect these italians or americans would be able to cook better than Singapore restaurants. But what we got was soggy angel hair. al dente was not a word on the menu. sheer disappointment though the taste was okay.

the pizza i ordered was another letdown. the ingredients on the pizza can be described with one word - miserly. you can count the number of sausage slices on the pizza and the cheese they put in tasted weird. the crust was not even as crispy as what i recall pasta mania (gosh! i compared them to pasta mania!! what an insult to this 'authentic italian restaurant) in singapore served.

the wine we shared was good though. we couldn't finish our food and in the end had to pack the remaining 5 slices of pizza to go.

we shopped at crate & barrel after dinner and picked up some nice stuff for our home. we were so tempted to buy a shelf back to Singapore but we know the airline might reject the size of our item.

oh well... we'll see what chris tells me later. he's still eyeing it in the catalog. we ended the night back at our hotel and i read the card chris gave me for my birthday. i always love his cards/letters. his words always move me and make me feel so important in his life. :)