My house parties

(L-R): Ginger Potenciano, me, Ivy Allegre, Soy Agra, Gia Guiang, Chinky Vigo, Grace Exconde and Gary del Rosario.

(L-R): Andrea Tesei, Virginie, me, Sheila and Michel Lehmann.

I believe that having lots of happy people at home improves the feng shui. They leave good vibes. We always had parties at home when I was growing up. My late mom was a very good hostess. She can throw a party at a moment's notice. She was amazing. I inherited this love for throwing parties from my mom. I think I am pretty good at it. When I first moved to Hong Kong in 2000, my friends would go all the way to my apartment in Tsing Yi for my parties. And when I transferred to Central, I had so many impromptu parties that I could not count them anymore. I lived in Basel for 16 months and hosted three big ones. And now that I am spending a lot of time at home in Hong Kong, I finally got the flat especially my kitchen organised. I have started to host parties again. Recently, I had Andrea Tesei's and then Chinky Vigo's leaving parties.

Andrea worked as a research assistant for the economists at the BIS Asian Office. He was with us for a year. He left us so he could finish his PhD. He is back in Barcelona now.

For Andrea's party, I invited his lovely girlfriend Virginie, Sheila and Michel Lehmann and, of course, my cousin Grace. We started off with Korean BBQ dinner (very easy to prepare!) and then an evening of songs. I had the perfect guests. Very appreciative and very cooperative. The highlight of the evening was the group singing "My Way", not once, but twice! It was a great way to say good night.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mjurado1hk/200709AndreaSLeavingDinner

Chinky Vigo has been in HK for two years now. She is in market research. Lucky Chinky gets to go back to Manila soon! Not surprisingly, there is shortage of experts in her field, so she found the same job paying her her Hk salary back home. Isn't that great? We all want that!

The party started innocently enough. I prepared another very easy table-top self-serve dinner. Shabu-shabu. Tried and tested. After we all got our fill, we mingled and then enjoyed the gelato that Soy "Leif Garett" Agra brought for us. (The pictures will tell you why he is now called Leif Garett? For the young ones, Leif was a 70s icon.) As my magic mics were with a friend, Gary brought his state-of-art wireless mics with thousands of songs to get the party going. It seemed that everyone was tame (perhaps because of too much food and because Jane was absent) which is so unlike this Filipino group! I had a sudden burst of inspiration. I went to my room and put on my blonde wig and sunglasses. When I came out, everyone went crazy. And so, the party started!

http://picasaweb.google.com/mjurado1hk/200709ChinkySLeavingParty1

I have to say that my apartment feels much happier after these parties! I have to have another one as soon as I recover from this Malaysian bug!