Ali's farewell party and clubbing in town (14th March 2008)

Work has been really busy lately and time seems to fly by – whoosh!

Ali threw a farewell party tonight at Zarbos Restaurant on Herd Street by the waterfront for friends he has made in Wellington during his time here. Ali’s heading back to Toronto, Canada – oh no, not another one leaving!! :( Yeah, unfortunately for us, Ali’s decided to return home and will be leaving NZ on Monday. Sob, sob!

Kalwant and I agreed to meet up in town before walking to Zarbos together. Some photos taken on my way to Courtenay Place:

A group of Hare Krishna followers singing along Cuba Street

Did the devils just landed in town?

And here comes the men in green, making a nice Christmas colour mix as they cross the reds

A blown up leprechaun at Molly Malones (it's St Patrick's day on Monday)

Ali did a fantastic job organising dinner for us. Zarbos was a really nice place and the food, fabulous! We had a 3-course meal for $30 per person with a starter and dessert of choice from the selection provided and a family style meal for all to share. The night started off with champagne all round and warm-up salsa dancing before the meal – some of us even managed to squeeze in a dance or two in between courses! It was interesting to have dinner and dance like this. People could choose to dance or mingle or do both. Most of us were either from salsa or Weta Digital and came from a variety of countries. Just shows how multicultural/multiracial Wellington is!

After dinner, we all headed to Ali’s apartment block just upstairs of the restaurant to the rooftop for a group photo. Oh, it feels so sad that another friend is leaving Wellington...Thanks for the party Ali! Best wishes in your future endeavours and do come back to visit us soon – keep in touch! We’ll all miss you and the girls from salsa will definitely miss dancing with you! Photos taken at the farewell: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8070917@N05/sets/72157604125270064/detail/

Some of us headed to Latinos Bar while me, Su Wei, Alicia, Kalwant, Jessica and Thomas took Alicia’s friend, Anna-Li, into town and hit the clubs. Anna-Li was visiting from Israel and travelling around NZ, stopping in Wellington for the weekend. It was supposed to be a girls’ night out but Thomas didn’t mind being the only boy in the group – he was probably the envy of other men, having 6 gorgeous girls dancing with him! :P Photos of us clubbing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8070917@N05/sets/72157604130686079/detail/

I really enjoyed my night tonight with friends. I’ve not seen some of them for awhile! It was a great opportunity to catch up and have some fun together :)