My 23rd birthday

It was my 23rd birthday yesterday, 3rd September 2007. It was a nice, memorable one, in stark contrast to my 22nd, as miserable a birthday as you can imagine. But this post isn't about that....it's about my 23rd birthday.
I had an awesome time. It was a "surprise" party, planned by my friends. The actual party was on the 2nd at midnight. A large group of friends showed up, it was a super "surprise". (It's not like I didn't have an inkling of what was happening!) But I was still delighted by it. A couple of people invited couldn't make it (one of them had fallen asleep!) but everyone remembered my birthday. I was touched.
The party went on for an hour. There was laughter, jokes all around. I was amazed at how well-coordinated it all was. We thought about taking it out to the pool, but there was already another drunken party happening at the pool, with people throwing each other into the pool and laughing like crazy (the next day we discovered a shopping cart from HEB in the pool). Everyone started leaving at about 1. It was a wonderful party.
After bidding goodbye to everyone, I got a call from an unnamed number. "Hello?" I said, knowing it was probably from India. "Hey!" came the voice from the other side. "Happy birthday! I hope I calculated the time right! Please tell me it's midnight there?"
I laughed. It was my best friend from college, Sonal, from back home in Mumbai. "You're close," I said. "It's one." We had a good laugh, and a nice, long, leisurely chat. It capped off a nice night.
The next day, I went to the Apple store at Barton Creek mall to get my iPod fixed -- it had, for some reason, stopped working. My friends, Archana and Vaibhav, and I went to Serranos on Red River for lunch. The food wasn't anything to write home about, but the ambience was terrific. We were there till nearly four, and then left for the mall. On the way, it started raining. The rain escalated into a full-fledged downpour, the water just lashing down, which delighted me -- it has rained on my birthday, every year for the last 23 years, and this just continued the tradition!
The bus wound through the wet streets of Rollingwood, and halted at the mall. I marched into the Apple store (where the iPod, as is often the case, worked perfectly fine), and then back to downtown. Archana left then, and Vaibhav and I were joined by my roommate, Sandy. The three of us went in for a quick coffee at Starbucks, and then were back out, and decided to roam around Congress. We did so, taking in the brightly-lit stores, the beautiful tree-lined views, and, of course, Town Lake in the distance. We did walk upto Town Lake, and walked down to the old Congress bridge. It was lovely. By then it was getting dark, and I looked up expectantly to see bats, but didn't see any. We walked along the bridge for a while, enjoying the sights of the setting sun and the lights of South Austin reflected in the darkening water.
We then walked back to Congress, and walked back to Sixth Street. We walked along sixth for a while, watched a couple of live bands performing in the Irish Pub and Friends Cafe. Sixth was still lively, even on a weekday. We then caught the bus back to 32nd and Red River, and then walked to Star Seeds Cafe on the I-35 for dinner. I was too full to really appreciate dinner, but I did appreciate the time spent with my friends.
And so ended my birthday. We all walked back to our house (Sandy's and mine), talked for a while, and then parted ways. It was a lovely, memorable birthday -- and probably my last birthday as a student! I really enjoyed myself.