birthday

i turned 22 yesterday.

today i shall blog about my birthday. maybe i've talked about it before but it's okay i shall just repeat.

birthdays in my family have never been an occasion to celebrate. it's really one of those standout points of my familial culture. birthdays pass like they never exist. it's not like we forget each others birthday, it's just that we don't celebrate. so at most i'll get the occasional kiss from my mom or hearing my sis saying 'wah nari birthday seh!' haha.

which is enough for me really. i don't really know why we don't celebrate birthdays, but i think it's tied to this other point - we don't eat out. very very rare, if ever. so no going out to eat, hence no going out to celebrate. even at home, i can only recall my sis' birthday being celebrated only once with a cake (when she was 6 i think?). the cake had strawberries on top, and if i remember correctly it was a mango cake. or something like that. the only birthday cake i had was when i was 4, and although i'm not quite sure who bought it, all i remember is it was a chocolate cake with strawberries on top, and we had it at my grandparents' place. since i was 4 then, there was only my elder cousin and my sis who was just born months earlier, and my mom and maybe my aunts, so it was quite a low-key affair. my next birthday cake was when i was 18 - a hello kitty cake, shared between me, fab and jj in a combined birthday celebration at pizza hut after our maths prelims exams. why hello kitty, i asked my classmates. oh, we couldn't get dear daniel, so we had to settle for hello kitty. right. i still have the photos of them up on friendster amazingly. haha.

the fact that i can remember my cake had strawberries on top of it almost 2 decades ago probably sums it all up.
hardly anything exciting happens on my birthday. in 2004 i went to school to study, in 2005 i was in camp doing running in the morning. in 2006 i spent it fixing some hardware up for my pc. i can't even remember what happened on my birthdays when i was in primary school or secondary school. it didn't help that my birthday always fell in the september holidays. haha. so last year was really weird in having to come to school for lessons on my birthday.

in any case don't take me wrongly - it's not that i'm lamenting that my birthday doesn't get recognised/acknowledged/celebrated. it's really fine with me. i know nowadays people interprete having birthdays to honour themselves in a way. out of the 365 days in a year, the birthday then becomes a day for people to rejoice and be happy for themselves and having the people that they love around them. it's perfectly normal.

in my case, mum and dad grew up in tough times, and celebrating birthdays are probably the last thing on their minds while they were growing up. i suppose that mindset still carries through to today. being as practical as they are i would really understand if they never celebrated anyone's birthdays in the family. even my sister has never grumbled or anything on this point. i accept this as the culture of my family which would really deviate much from the typical familial discourse of contemporary singaporean families. haha. so i'm fine with that no worries. and i'm sure there are people who have similar familial cultures too, and i'm sure they don't feel the least disturbed about it. of course in the event i have children in the future, i shan't impose such a culture on them - since kids nowadays seem to be born naturally as spoilt brats.

last year i had my primary school friends celebrate for me at amirah's grill. it was fun. a small mini-party of sorts. i appreciated that since i've never had any birthday dinner of any kind before. very sweet of them, especially nurul rather, to have organised such a thing. we played peribahasa charades and taboo. haha. very fun.

what about this year? as always i woke up on my birthday feeling normal, like the day was just another day. i went to school to study actually, since i knew i wouldn't do anything productive at home anyway. after studying for quite a while then i went to choa chu kang. a dinner with izy and iza. well, not exactly correct.

we made our way to cck park, and wow i was surprised and amazed at the turnout. a surprise guestlist was already waiting! for a fact i knew more people were invited, but the turnout was unexpected really. i probably can't act being shocked well, but in my heart i was telling myself wow, these people actually bother to come from afar to come and eat. i'm touched really at the turnout. so far the biggest number of people i've somewhat celebrated my birthday with. at least the food was great, and so was the company. can't really say the same for the presents, but well - i shouldn't complain should i? haha. thanks anyway. the gifts that they gave centred upon the theme of bottles, so now i have bottles of all sorts and sizes just occupying the already-packed fridge, and they are also lying around in the kitchen. haha.

in anyway thank you very much people for coming down. even though the dinner did not last long, i'm touched and amazed by the fact that the turnout was really good, and many bothered to set aside time to come from afar and be there last night. and a special thanks to my dearest who organised the dinner for me! thankyou for the cupcakes too dear! (amazingly they have strawberries on top too) oh and her friends too - funnyfriend, onion and whatever-her-name-is - for the card. thanks to all of you who also gave me gifts and cards, and thank you very much too to all those who smsed, msned, or even facebked me well wishes. really alot of people wished me well this year. haha. a far cry from those days of the jahiliah era. haha.

on another note i think my lecturer was sindir-ing me abit in class just now. tsk.