Shower at the Holly Brown Café

This time, we made it to a party. Previous invites by friends here in HK were often not attended simply because the bed has more to offer.

Last Sunday, we attended a baby shower. The "shower-ee", Joyce, is due to deliver her 2nd baby, a girl, around March 15ish. Part of the girlfriends-tradition is to throw parties to send off their girlfriend to married life, motherhood, etc. To make her journey to motherhood more memorable, a surprise party was thrown spearheaded by the ever thoughtful Eryne.

Photo by Sheryl

It was held on the 2nd floor of Holly Brown Café in 22 Stanley Street, Central.

Vin and I usually pass by it but it was actually that day when we had the chance to try it.

The party’s voucher, worth HK 120 came with coffee, muffin and a gelato.

Coffee. I am not a coffee aficionado and I don’t make a very credible judge if a coffee is good or not. I just simply enjoy it or not, that’s it. Mainly because I’ve learned to love coffee as simple as the Nescafe 3-in-1 or the one from the vendo in Nestle’s office. At Holly, I went for the usual which I know will never go wrong, an iced hazelnut latte. I didn’t know what happened in between but what was served to me was hot. To make it right, I asked it to be turned to ice latte. A few moments later, I just noticed that there was a commotion between Eryne and the manager over my coffee. Thinking my request was not at all complicated, I didn’t understand why they made a fuss about it since I was just asking them to put ice on it.  Anyway, it came back to me tasteless and not a hint of hazelnut in the coffee. I was just turned off.

Muffin. It was a nice muffin actually. Not so sweet and not bland. Just right. Mrs. Fields is still on the top of my list though. 

Muffins by Sheryl

My muffin

Gelato. The gelato was the last instalment from the voucher. First, they gave the coffee. Then you get the muffin. As for the grand finale, they ask for your preferred gelato which eventually became the saving grace of the not-so memorable coffee and muffin.

We were torn with all those delightful flavors on their menu. But Vin and I thought it would be great to get Yi Yang and Crazy Berry.

While waiting for the gelatos to be served, we were already imagining its size and taste. When they were served to us, we were awed at how large they were, considering those were only medium. 



Yi Yang

Crazy Berry

In between the muffin and gelato, were games played by the girls and couples. Oh, the term “couples” sound both old and religious at the same time to me.

I think not a baby shower has gone without a game wherein the mommy's belly size was guessed. And this was no other. 

Ate Lyn winning by 3 inches short.

The game participated by the couples is the most frequently incorporated in all kinds of parties nowadays--- “Pinoy Henyo" which I can say was popularised by Eat Bulaga. For those who don't know, the mechanics is quite simple, a word is guessed through asking clues/questions answerable only by, yes (“oo”), no (“hindi”), or can (for “pwede”).

Words to be guessed were, of course, associated to motherhood which were as wholesome as "breast milk" at first to eventually becoming risqué words like "69". Of all the laughing and bantering by everyone, it was almost forgotten that a daughter close to becoming a teen was present all the time and asked her dad, "What's 69? Why are you laughing?" I thought the dad was smilingly clueless in answering the question.

JC taking only less than 30 secs to nail the word

The next game I think should've been for the guys only. Well, it was a beer drinking contest in  baby bottles. What was actually hard was that though we sucked hard, not much beer was consumed because the teat was very small. That moment I wondered how babies could finish an 80z milk in a matter of minutes while there we were, already grown-ups sucking hard  and still exerting lots of efforts to finish. 


Unanimously, we figured out that this game wasn't going anywhere and since Ate Lyn was way ahead again, it was no doubt that we already had a winner. 

Since everybody was enjoying, nobody realised that it was almost 6PM. Sadly though, the party had to be ended already. 


That day certainly was one of those days when Vin and I "socialised" with others. Most of the time, the two of us would just stroll around and eat or just stay home and sleep. We've realised it's fun to enjoy ourselves in the company of others here in HK. Now, we're up to some socialising! Til the next baby shower!