Payal's Bday Gift

In my post here I've written about my best friend and I celebrating my birthday in Paris. If you read my blog often or if you follow me on Twitter then you'll need little introduction to Payal, my best friend from college who now is married and lives in New York City. I've written a lot about her on here as well as in my articles that I used to do on Khaleej Times, and I think she's a huge reason why I love NYC so much. Of course, if I could have picked one person to celebrate my birthday with it would be her, and so I couldn't have had a better birthday present than having her fly to Paris to come celebrate with me!! She however wanted to add to that present and give me something (or a bunch of things) that would either define me or signify a lot of the memories we have together. As silly as some of the items may seem to you, I thought they were hilarious and so incredibly sweet  and thought I'd photograph them to give you a glimpse of what else makes up ME- besides the gadgets, books and fashion!! So here's a glimpse into my birthday gift and the cute bag it came in-

So you're probably wondering, "What the...?!" Yes, part of my birthday present involved food.. and not just ANY type of food. It's very odd but as much as I LOVE my fancy French meals and pride myself on my gastronomic knowledge, my favourite meal on any given evening is probably cup noodles and chips. Yes, it sounds horrible and yes its extremely unhealthy and fattening and has a zillion calories and is just an ODD combo, but I really have a real love affair with noodles, and am a complete chipaholic. The best noodles in Dubai are at Bentoya on Sheikh Zayed Road and is a dish called the "Tantan Men" (or sounds like that anyway) and the best cup noodles from any supermarket are the Koka Tomyam variety. Yes, I can really do a thesis on noodles and give you the best noodle shops in almost all parts of the world. As for chips, I love ALL types except, strangely enough, the ready salted variety. Payal has for over the thirteen odd years she's known me, tried desperately to change my eating habits and shake off my chip and noodle obsession, extremely unsuccessfully. She's thus, has tried to adapt it by making the chips baked, and the noodles the rice variety, which is gluten free, and according to her, slightly less sinful. Oh and since she grew up in Japan, she bought me Japanese chocolates too to finish my sinful meal.

I love to paint and draw and doodle and love these weird Japanese-y type books. If you remember, I'd photographed one of these colouring books here that I'd picked up in Dubai. I don't really know what to ever do with them, as it's not like I'm a child and colour in them or anything of that sort. I guess it's why my mother says I collect junk! But you have to admit, it's extremely cute kinda junk? Well I guess Payal saw this and thought I'd appreciate it, which I very much did!

I'm kinda confused by why this book reminded her of me? I don't know whether it's because she thinks I should be looking for a husband, or because we have the oddest of names for each other... We call each other Wifey. I think it started in college because people would say we'd bicker like a married couple, which incidentally we kind of still do. We get into silly arguments where both of us forget what we were arguing about, or sometimes also have screaming matches with each other and stuff like that. Yes, it might seem crazy to you but I think is actually quite healthy in an odd way considering if we ever have an issue with each other, we sort it out with each other. Too many times people will go talk about their friends to other friends as they're "venting" their issues. We just scream at each other. Strange, yes, but it works for us! So yes, when we started calling each other "Wifey" in college, it never raised any eyebrows and Oprah and Gayle were just looked upon as being great girl friends and all was so simple in this world. Times have changed and people don't understand friendships anymore but the name has stuck! So a conversation between her and me will almost always start with a "Hi Wifey/Payali!" "Hi Wifey/Kirani!" greeting on both ends. Incidentally, her husband (who was in college with us) thinks its hilarious too, so it's not like a secret name or anything! Either way, I think this book had more to do with the former explanation of her wanting for me to look for a husband than the "Wifey" story, but now you know both.

Hmm.. this box contained one of this foldable desk things that I guess advertise to the world what mood you're in on that particular day. I should pull them out and wear them on a pin! Anyhow, thought it was really cute. My current mood?

And this one I thought was the funniest!! Pretty self explanatory! Made me laugh so hard!!!-

Ok so there were a whole bunch of other things that go in there that either didn't make it because I didn't photograph it, or because she didn't manage to get them to me in time!
- Mini boxes of cereal- Payal can't understand why I'd want to eat raw cereal (without milk) which I do, so that was in there
- A toothbrush/toothpaste set- So for my graduation present from college, Payal had bought me and her a final trip to Miami for one long weekend. This trip is what started the trend of us going away together, as is probably one of our most memorable one yet! Not because we went out and had so much fun.. but quite the opposite. Her face had broken out into a terrible rash that was sensitive to the sun so we had to stay indoors the entire time. Anyhow, the first day we got there, we woke up in the morning and realized we didn't have any toothpaste as both figured the other one would have carried it. The hotel didn't have any and we had quite the adventure trying to get ourselves some toothpaste, which I won't get into here! Mind you, I haven't been able to photograph the toothpaste as I had forgotten to carry mine from Dubai and am currently using the one she got me. It's a good thing she knows me as well as she does!
- A Hello Kitty rolling stamp thingy- One day I will tell you guys about my Hello Kitty Fettish. Today shall not be that day.
- An AMC (movie theatre) gift card- We both LOVE going for movies and always manage to see one on all our holidays. Let's just put it this way, last night was a Saturday night in Paris and we cancelled our plans at the last minute and were looking for a movie theatre to head to that played English films. We've even gone in the middle of the day to watch a movie in Orlando at the Universal Studios as we were hot and tired and wanted a break to sit down and rest. So yes, we rarely walk by a movie theatre without contemplating going in.

Hmmm.. I think that was about it. I'll update later if I think I've missed any part of the pressie! But it's so funny that something with so much meaningless stuff to someone else, can be so meaningful and thought provoking to someone else! Hope you guys have a best friend who knows you that well and whom you have so many random memories with.
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