this year, i shall celebrate
07 Aug 2010 5 Comments
in blabber
i was born the long-awaited first child to my parents. my parents wanted a child so much they actually were this close to adopting before they fell pregnant with me. as a result, i was treated like a little princess. year after year, my birthday was celebrated with a party. proper parties where everybody got dressed up, big cakes were produced and a mountain of pressies were taken home at the end of the day. obviously i don’t remember any of these parties but there are pictures. belive you me, there are pictures. lots and lots of pictures. what can i say, being the first child has its perks.
as i grew up, birthdays were marked only by misua eating. not just mine but my parents’ and siblings’ too. very boring stuffs.
for my 17th birthday, i went to a mall and had dinner with two close girlfriends (i was living by myself in surabaya by then). my 18th went by unmarked. i celebrated it by going to the bottle shop a few weeks after and bought liquors for my underage friends (underage as in 17 going on 18, not 12 or anything like that). for my 19th birthday, i invited four friends to my fancy inner city flat and cooked pan-fried chicken with mushroom sauce. it was very low-key because i had my heart spectacularly broken not long before. sobs…
this is weird but i actually can’t remember my 20th birthday. luckily this was followed by a very sweet 21st birthday.
i was a committee member for a student club at uni then and we were having problems with the student guild. to make long story shorts, my friends made up this story that the guild wanted to have a meeting with us and i had to come. i was pissed. on a saturday? yes, they said. the only time they had. right. whatever.
i was taken to a karaoke place in china town with this funny lighting that made white clothes glow in the dark. someone brought a chocolate cake with sparklers. i got pressies. i got flowers. i was surrounded by much loved friends. it was awesome.
i got another chocolate cake (with candles this time) for my 22nd. i was fortunate enough to spent the day with my lovely friends even though i did have to go to a real student guild meeting that day. yes, on a sunday. i also got my biggest birthday present so far a couple of weeks later. september 12th that year, i met MOH.
23rd was very quiet. i could tell the story but MOH would probably kill me for it so i won’t. for my 24th, MOH took me to an indonesian restaurant in new farm. there was a strand of hair in my springroll. it really was like eating in indo 
this was followed by a party with friends at my flat.
that was my last birthday celebrated outside norway. since then, my birthday has been celebrated the norwegian style, with marsipankake. marsipankake has taken misua’s place. i got presents from my in-laws but all in all, they’ve been very sedated birhtdays. but i’m so used to just eating misua for birthdays, i’m not bothered at all. i’m not big on birthdays anyway because i hate being the centre of attention. hate it.
but this year is going to be different. i have decided that after years of not celebrating myself, i’m due for something big. i was going to go home and celebrate it with my family but found out two of my siblings weren’t even going to be in indo for my birthday so plans were changed.
instead of indo, i’ll be off to london.
woo hoo!!!
an english-speaking country (a moment of silence, please).
fish and chips. markets. multicultural city. restaurants serving food from different countries. crowd. noise. traffic. i think i’m going to cry.
the hotel is booked. plane tickets are bought. my visa has been issued.
i CANNOT wait!
