It's October!

Since I was a kid, October has always signified the start of good things. Happy times. Good food. My birthday kicks it off in October, followed by the holiday involving gobs of candy. Then there is my brother's birthday, my dad's birthday and Thanksgiving in the next month. For December, the whole month is just a countdown to Christmas, with my parents' anniversary wedged in between, and finally my mom's birthday on the last day of the year. I can't help but be happy the last three months of the year since it means gifts - giving and receiving them - family, and friends. I'm almost depressed come January and the rest of the other 8 months.

Today, I am happy. Happier than I have been in a long time. My belly is stuffed full of some of the best food I've ever tasted, I've spent a very relaxing day with a great friend, and I've had a lovely weekend away from work.

On Friday, I received my first birthday gift - a beautiful knitted hat
from UBBF which I've stowed away in my purse and already worn this weekend. Last night, I joined a couple of work friends, a different group from the usual cliques, to watch The Science of Sleep, which I loved and also perfectly encapsulated how zany and emotional your dream life can be.

For this first day of October, it sprinkled rain and stayed coolly overcast all day. Just the way I like it most of the time. Wavy helped kick off the birthday month with brunch at Coral Tree Cafe and treated me to a massage at The Massage Place. Both brunch and massage were amazing. Suitably oiled up from the massage, we wandered over to Century City Mall, trying on overpriced t-shirts, and strolled around until dinner.

Dinner was the best part. Out of pure serendipity, we parked in front of Katsuya before brunch. We knocked on the door to make dinner reservations to the chagrin of the hostess, giving us an annoyed "can't you see we're not open yet and I'm busy typing on my chic laptop?" kind of look. Luckily that was the only snobbery we encountered the rest of the day in the shishi town of Brentwood.

I can't even begin to describe how wonderfully scrumptious the food was. The dish on the right is the seared salmon and avocado wrapped in tempura while the dish with the leaf is spicy tuna on crisped rice.












Tom Hanks, his wife Rita Wilson and their kids dined two tables away. Peter Gallagher from the OC, ate with his family in the next room over and made a point of stopping by Tom Hanks' table to say hi. We didn't try very hard not to stare.




All in all, a perfect day. In the end, the best part was spending a whole day with Wavy. And the best gift was the gift of her time.