yesterday was Tom's birthday party

My buddy Tom's birthday is tomorrow the 12th, a Monday, but Tom elected to celebrate on a Saturday, so a varied group of us met yesterday at around 6 p.m. at an Indo-Nepali restaurant called Pooja (뿌자/bbooja in Korean; the Sanskrit word puja means "worship"). This is apparently Tom's favorite restaurant; he told me that he goes there around once a month. Among the other arrivals were Tom's wife and son. Aside from them, I was only vaguely familiar with one or two of the other guests, so I ended up making many new acquaintances. As I've said many times before, this sort of situation is very uncomfortable for me, but I somehow made it through the evening without flipping out and destroying the place. Here are some photos of the food and the people:

samosa-chat, basically cut-up samosas drenched in yogurt, hot sauce, and green sauce; a bit oversauced, but good

I was really looking forward to the chicken biriyani I'd ordered—my first biriyani ever. It ended up being simpler than I thought it would be, compared to the many YouTube videos I'd seen showing the complex manner in which biriyani is normally prepared, but it was still good: spicy chicken, rice, and cashews all baked together in a pot. A tub of yogurt arrived before the biriyani itself; as it turned out, you were supposed to spoon some yogurt over the spicy rice to help balance out the flavors. I also ordered garlic naan (flatbread), which I dipped in the tub of yogurt.

two decidedly non-Indian dishes: a side salad and a vegetable dish done up ggakdugi-style

the birthday boy himself, looking regal and ridiculous

Tom's friend Vivian started off as Tom's student a couple decades ago. She's now a mom with a son who is about the same age as Tom's own son. She teaches Chinese and, although she started off learning US English, she lived in England a few years and lost her American accent in favor of an English one. I sat across from her at our long table, and she seemed nice. Gave me a hug as I was leaving.

a better view of the birthday cake (berry saeng-cream)

I felt bad for Tom's friend Mi-a, who sat to my right. Mi-a had to wait a long time for her meal to come out; the food generally came out slowly because there was apparently only one chef in the kitchen that night. Mi-a is vegetarian; she ordered a veggie curry and allowed me to taste a bit of it. It was quite good. I'm not averse to vegetarian dishes that are done right, and most Indian vegetarian dishes are quite tasty. Alas, Mi-a ended up eating only a third of what she'd been given. Vivian (pictured above) couldn't finish her tandoori chicken, although she and a guy diagonally across from me—dude named Darrell—managed to polish off most of a bottle of Absolut vodka. Darrell turned out to be blessed or cursed with a loud, effusive personality, and the vodka only made him louder as the night went on. 

Tom's boss at the university, a woman named Don (sic), sat directly to my left. Beyond her was an English guy named Matthew, who sounded like a bit of a raconteur as he rattled on with this and that story. Diagonally to my right, there was a Canadian guy named Angelo, whom I'd met before (we'd all gone out to Incheon), and an older Korean gentleman (the name escapes me) who was a lawyer Tom has worked with in the past. Way at the front of the table sat Brian, whom I knew as a KMA-era acquaintance (remember I used to work for KMA? no? here's a refresher). All in all, people were gabby, so I didn't have to try too hard to hold up my end of the conversation. Mi-a showed me some cell-phone pics of one of her many trips to America; one place that charmed her was in Naples, Florida—a car museum called Revs.

Eventually, it was time to leave. I had given Tom a copy of my homeschooling book with an envelope containing W500,000 inside it because, as I said in a note, it didn't seem right for Tom to have to pay for his own party. (Tom sent a voice message today to say I'd more than covered his expenses.) Vivian, for whatever reason, gave me a hug as I left. There was plenty of handshaking to go around, and that was that. While it was a nice gathering, I did feel the urge to breathe, like a claustrophobic leaving a crowded elevator. Confession: I was tired and my back had been aching earlier in the day, so I almost didn't go to Tom's party. In the end, though, I elected to honor the invitation. While the restaurant Pooja might have fallen down, a bit, in certain aspects of its service, it was overall not a bad place to eat. It didn't give me the same favorite-resto vibe it had obviously given Tom, but I'd go back there if asked.