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.

The Domain

Yesterday, my friends and I headed to The Domain near Braker and Burnet, on the Mopac frontage, to do some shopping.
I'd heard about the Domain at Dell. It's a ritzy, exclusive shopping complex, with some good electronics stores -- I knew there were Apple and Sony stores there. There's also a Borders store there, which is what actually attracted me. It's my birthday tomorrow, and I wanted to do some birthday shopping there. So off headed me and two of my friends -- Sandhya (Sandy), my roommate, and Vaibhav, another friend (the guy in the photo alongside).
We caught the 3 to go up Burnet, and halt at Braker and Burnet. It was a pleasant day, so the trip felt rather nice. Even Burnet looked good for once -- I usually abhor the road, it looks horribly dry and dusty most of the time. As the bus hit US 183, pleasant memories of traveling to Dell every morning rushed back. I grew even more excited as we headed toward Braker. The bus turns at Braker, and goes along it. We got off opposite the UT TACC.
From there, it's a long walk to the Domain -- almost a mile, I'd say. It's a narrow, winding road, and gives hell to the pedestrians. Luckily, we were too enthused and in good spirits to count the close shaves we had narrowly avoiding being run down by passing cars. Prickly bushes scratched my bare ankles, and I fought the urge to let out growls of frustration.
Finally, we hit The Domain. The first store I saw was Borders, and I headed in as if pulled by a magnet. It was a large, two-story store, and I looked around in awe. In hindsight, it was probably smaller than the Barnes and Noble at Arboretum, but it certainly seemed huge!! I rushed over to the manga section, and grabbed Cantarella vol 5 and 6. It's one of my favorite mangas, and I'd searched everywhere for volumes after 3, and this was the first place I found it -- save Amazon, of course.
Sandy, Vaibhav and I went upstairs to the Seattle's Best cafe upstairs, and had a leisurely coffee milkshake. It was a nice place to hang about, even if we found a seat only after 15 minutes of glaring at people who occupied tables. We were in Borders for almost two hours, and left at about 6:30, deciding to see the rest of the Domain.
It's a pretty place. There is a long, tree-lined avenue, and flanking both sides of the road are stores. They are individual stores, not a huge mall -- I love stores like that. I hate malls. There were lost of stores -- Neiman Marcus, Apple, Sony, Puma, Macy's......the pricey types, the type of places you go to after you've started earning, not while you're a penniless grad student without any assistantships. I finally entered the Macy's store to get "something nice" for my birthday. I guess my usual dressing style isn't very "nice". I did get a very pretty blue shirt, gifted to me by my two friends. I'll wear that to the party tonight.
There was live music being performed in front of the little waterfall in the park sort of thing in front of the Sony store. It was a jazz band, and the three of us listened to the music for a while. It was beautiful, and we appreciated it.
We were in the Domain till almost 11. We left at 10:45 pm, caught a 11:04 bus back, and then went to Austin's Pizza on Guadalupe at almost midnight. We got back home at almost midnight.
It was a fantastic day, though....enjoyable all the more because I was with friends. And now I've struck another name off my list of things to see in Austin!