I'm overwhelmed.

I've thrown parties before, but I've never experienced anything quite like this. What started out as a simple housewarming party (seven months after I moved in, but hey—it took me a while to furnish the place) somehow ballooned into a... well, a real party.

I admit it. I'd been so convinced of the party's sure-to-be-lackluster turnout that I started getting bitter about it weeks before the actual event. Most of the get-togethers I've organized in the past have tended to be a little anemic, not so much because people shun me, just that they don't really associate my name and the word "fun." That's mostly my fault; I can't really blame them.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when partigoers started arriving en masse. My former Nova coworkers came first, followed by other Nova people I've met over the past year, their friends, and eventually one of my private students and her friends.

I had not considered this possibility. My living room is 8.5 feet by 12 feet (260x360cm), and comfortably seats six. By the end of the evening, 22 people had somehow squeezed into it. While I'd provided a popular assortment of hard-to-find western snack foods, the party's beverages were generously supplied by the arriving guests themselves, creating a sort of self-sustaining, critical-mass party explosion.

Eventually, in an ironic play on the word "housewarming," my air conditioner proved increasingly unable to dispel the heat generated by two dozen gaijin, and the living room eventually turned into a kiln. But my valiant guests, perhaps captivated by my refined taste in home furnishings, soldiered on.

Deep down, I realize I may never be this popular again, but to those of you who were there, I salute you. May the memories live on as tiny snapshots in your cell phones.

Clockwise from center:
Steve, Mark, unidentified Japanese man, the back of Nicola's head, Helen, Kath, Kane, Paul, Scott, Daniel, Keyah, Josh, Gavin's knee, Doug's knee.