As you'd probably know by now, I turned 21 on the 2nd of August. When I was in my late teens, I was quite ambivalent of the whole birthday affair. Like, "What's the big deal?", y'know? But when the day drew closer, I realised that like many things, your 21st birthday is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. If I didn't do anything special on my 21st, I only have myself to blame if I start regretting not celebrating it.

"No shit, sherlock," one corner of my mind* said. "You celebrate one birthday every year. What makes this one specialer** than the rest?"

It only has meaning because we humans gave meaning to it. It's the legal age for you to sin; you can start drinking, gambling, and voting... Not that age has ever stopped people from doing the former two***. Furthermore, 21's a winning hand in Black Jack.

Lastly, why the hell not? The prospect of regret seems more undesirable than possible boredom of not enjoying myself.

Celebrate my 21st it is, then.

30th July 2008 - Birthday dinner with family
Thankfully, my parents had a little something planned; Wednesday night dinner at this place in Damansara Uptown called Izzi. The food was okay but their pizza was rather good. Should've gotten more pizza.






1st August 2008 - MNSM BBQ Party
Originally I wanted to make this a biannual event, but there wasn't enough time to get it going. Also, I did not plan for the party to coincide with my birthday though the coincidence was a bonus. Anyway, we had much fewer people this time around; by Friday afternoon, only about 45 people have signed up, compared to the 90 or so last year.

But when the party already started, the turnout ballooned to more than 70 people. Yet, we only had food enough to feed around 50 to 60. Consequently, we had to make two extra shopping trips to restock our supplies.




When it was around 10.30pm, Peck Yun announced my birthday to everyone and made me stand on a chair while everyone sang Happy Birthday (thanks, mate!). As the song was about to end, they revealed water guns in their posession and proceeded to soak me (thanks, mate!).


I really appreciate the improvised celebration, guys. [sarcasm]So much so that I spared you all from staying back and cleaning the BBQ pits with me.[/sarcasm]

Okay I admit, I had fun.

2nd August 2008 - My "real" 21st birthday party
Peck Yun aka Darren has known me since we were 12. Who would've thought that nine years later he'd be throwing a BBQ (again!) party at his house just for me?

Okay, not just me, but Jason too, who celebrated his birthday a couple of days earlier.



Of course, tradition states that on your birthday, you have got to remove candles buried in your birthday cake using just your teeth:



And to top it all off, Jason and I got these wicked babies as birthday gifts:




He drank and partied so much that the moment he went back to his room, he KO-ed on the bed

At the end of the day, I gained 3 kilos, received lots of presents, shotgunned a can of beer (beer sucks!), bottoms-upped a glass of whiskey, and overall enjoyed myself like a kid in a candy store. Once again, great thanks to Darren Peck Yun for throwing the party; I really appreciated it.


Well, all in all, I think it was an extremely productive 21st birth-week with little to be regretted. I'm already looking forward to my 30th birthday celebrations.

"Alright, you win. I'll keep my thoughts shut for now..." went the aforementioned corner of my mind.

*The pissy corner of my mind; the one that makes me dread going for classes, whine about the littlest of things and always wakes up on the wrong side of the bed in mornings.
**I just discovered that "specialer" is a real word.
***Age doesn't stop me from drinking and gambling. Money (or lack thereof) does. That and the fact that beer sucks monkey butt.

(NEW!) The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
By now, all of you should know of my strange interest in Zimbabwe, its failing currency among other things. When I last posted figures, the RM was trading with the Z$ at a rate of 1.00 to 2.48. A mere 26 days later, and this is what you get:

The Z$ has decreased in value by almost four times its value 26 days ago!

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Unless I think of something better; the Monash Ball is this Saturday and I'll be emceeing. If you're a student, go for the ball and check me out! *Cough* Tickets are still on sale near the cafeteria.

Classes have started again in full swing. Of course, that's bloody boring stuff (hell, I fall asleep in lectures on occasion) so we'll just skip to the next item on the menu.

Right now I'm typing this from my office computer because my PC died on me last Tuesday. It pains because it just happened without warning; I came home from last Tuesday's choir practice only to be greeted with my mom asking me why the machine refused to start.

A little bit lot of dusting the computer later, unplugging and replugging the cables, and some monitor-swapping brought me to a conclusion that the thing was deader than a parrot in a Python sketch.

Till today I've yet to get it repaired because I was too busy running things and celebrating my birthday last week(!). But that's not stopping me from blogging about the Orientation Bash that happened in Sungai Chongkak three weeks ago...

19th to 20th July 2008 - Monash Orientation Bash
This time around, Joyce (the Activities Chairperson) decided to organise a camp to Sungai Chongkak for the freshies. We got almost 200(!) participants this time around, including buddies/helpers and the organising committee. As usual, I'll just post photos (provided by Namie) in chronological order and provide some commentary as we roll through.

Morning saw the happy (though mostly dazed) campers being randomly assigned into teams.



An hour and a half riding on the bus and we arrive at the entrance to the Sungai Chongkak recreational forest reserve (I think that's how it translates to English).





While waiting for lunch to arrive and for the games to begin, the campers took it upon themselves to invade the eponymous river.


I took it upon myself to invade an otherwise nice photo of my roommate officemate, Cze Wien and her boyfriend some guy named Desmond.


Lunch took really, really long to arrive because we were almost an hour ahead of schedule. Bored out of our minds, we simply sulked.


And then we got the bright idea of preparing a circular rock dam in the middle of the river, with stones and leaves in the middle upon which we would place Darren's portable stove, which we would use to cook food we bought from MyDin the night before.

Sadly, the rock formations were indiscriminately destroyed with great prejudice by some scouts who were camping downstream from us.



Food eventually came, so everyone began eating.


Sometime after the food had been distributed, I was assigned to a game station about 200 to 400 metres downstream. I took my food pack down there and waited...

And waited...

And waited some more...


Nizmi and I waited for almost an hour and a half before the campers actually came to play our game. That was terrible time management!



The next activity of the day was the cooking competition at 4pm, otherwise known as the "cook your own dinner or starve" game. We provided them with the most basic of essentials to start their own fires; charcoal, matches, and firestarters.


Even the foodstuff provided was spartan; eggs, flour, baking soda, baked beans and potatoes don't exactly make the heartiest of meals, but we manage.



When night came, most of the campers went for the activities planned by the Joyce's organising committee. I stayed back to help Jeevan (the official camp chief chef) prepare food for when the rest return from their activities. A little bit of drama ensued later, involving the very late return of those who went for the four-hour long night walk. Obviously, by the time they came back to camp, the food was already really cold.


Anyway, Namie didn't take photos at night, so I'll just skip to the following day. I woke up in the morning with the best idea ever; taking a morning bath in the river! The freezing water (it was really, really cold) washed away the stench of charcoal and smoke that accumulated throughout the previous day. No photos this time because nobody really wants to take photos of topless men (Desmond and Darren included) washing themselves in a river.

After discovering that my niche in this camp was starting and keeping the fire going long and strong enough to cook food (thanks to five hours of doing just that the evening before), I shied away from today's activities and remained at the cooking area.




Once boredom kicked in, hilarity ensued:




Not much else happened after the game session. The campers came back for lunch...


...and then we packed up and left. Cleaning the campsite up was a chore, though. It's a surprise that we didn't take longer than two hours.

And that's about it, actually. Would really love to write more but I got a class to catch in 20 minutes, and rest assured the next post will be somewhat more interesting, since it's about how I celebrated my 21st birthday.

Pointless Fact of the Day:
Zimbabwe finally decided to revalue its currency! Well, not exactly. The currency itself still doesn't hold much value in the foreign exchange market (except maybe as high grade toilet paper?), but at least it's not so dizzying to talk in Zimbabwean dollar terms anymore.

On the 1st of August, Zimbabwe cut 10 zeroes off its currency. Hence, Z$10 billion turns into Z$1.

Remember the last time I posted? RM1 was equivalent to Z$5.7 billion. By right, with 10 zeroes out of the picture, it should be RM1 to Z$0.57, right?


Wrong. According to XE.com, RM1 is equal to Z$2.48. That's how fast prices rise in Zimbabwe; within a week, the currency's value have dropped almost five times, from 1:0.57 to. Imagine going to the local mamak and buying nasi lemak at RM3 today, but next week, when you go there again, it costs RM15.

Zimbabwe's a pretty fucked up country, don't you think? And we're just talking about inflation here. Don't even get me started with the country's elections.