08/09/07...

"History repeated itself." Not exactly though, but there were some similarities.

First, the time was the same – it was nearly 12am (Malaysian time), which also means nearly 2am (Melbourne time). I was online and chatting while opening Facebook and Gmail at the same time.

At this time 365 days ago, I was also online and chatting while opening Friendster and Yahoo! Mail at the same time.

Second, the venue. This year it was at the Roberts gym. Last year, it was at the Akasia badminton court. Both venues are related to sports.

Third, the chat windows which showed up on my laptop after I came back to my room. Yie Min wished me but I wasn’t around. It also happened last year – he wished me via MSN and I wasn’t in front of the laptop too!

Okay, now, the story – to tell the truth, I was half expecting the celebration to be at midnight before the day (and half expecting it to be on the day itself). Earlier in the afternoon (7th September), after lecture, Daniel was telling me that he was fetching Yeu Sheng, Ryan, Yun Ying and Chean Ying to Clayon to buy groceries. I looked straight into Yun Ying’s eyes, she was giggling – and I knew that our minds were thinking of the same thing (me thinking they were going to buy the cake and she was thinking that they were going to buy a cake). So I purposely said, ‘I wanna go! Yerr…I wanna go!’ but nobody bothered me. (There were 5 people going and according to the law only a maximum of 5 people are allowed to travel in a car…which means there’s no more space for extra one person – ME.) Usually Chean Ying would offer her place but this time they just walked away towards the car park. Hmmmm… I thought. They certainly looked suspicious…

Night came. After dinner, I studied a bit and went online. At 11pm Cheng Khoon texted me and said that he can’t stand anymore as he’s tired and he wanted to sleep, so he wished me an early happy birthday. I thought, ‘Cannot tahan anymore? Why would he say that?’ Again, it increased my expectance of the celebration past midnight. At around 12am my phone started ringing – calls came in and messages started bombarding my phone inbox.

Time past. Chau Wang told me earlier that he wanted to make dessert and he came to take the oven tray, flour and Milo from me. He even borrowed eggs from my neighbour. He asked me to go downstairs to make the dessert together but I said no coz I was planning to sleep. So he left. At nearly 2am, suddenly there was a knock on my door. I opened the door and there stood Yu Wan with a bunch of colourful balloons in her hand. My neighbour who was standing beside her sang birthday song for me.

‘Where did you get these balloons?’ I asked.

‘We blew it...’

‘Who are the ‘we’ you mean?’

‘Well...I’m sent here to invite you to the birthday party...each of us blew a balloon here...’ she answered.

‘Har? NOW?!’ I was quite surprised because it’s already 2am and I was preparing to go to bed.

‘Yes...faster change your clothes and come down!’

‘OK OK...where are we celebrating?’

‘At the gym...’ on hearing the word ‘gym’, I went on and said, ‘GYM???’

‘Yeah, gym. We initially planned to celebrate at the music room but those who went to the Ball just came back and it’s noisy. So we changed places.’

‘Oh...alright.’ After changing my clothes, she handed me the balloons and I followed her, while my stairway-mates who saw the balloons asked whose birthday it was; and they wished me happy birthday.

At the gym, everyone was there – Yeu Sheng, Chean Ying, Daniel, Cheng Khoon, Nooi Hoay, Calvin, Ye Chia, Shea Chuen, Justina, Ryan, Yun Ying, Chau Wang and Christina. They sang birthday song, took some pictures – there were only 8 candles on the cake by the way (the reason being there weren’t enough candles =.=) I remembered someone saying ‘Good what, 8 candles, 8 years old, means that you are still young!’ I made a wish and was about to blow the candles when my phone rang. It’s Cheah Yen. She asked, ‘What are you doing?’ It was kinda funny because you wouldn’t expect someone to call when you were about to blow the candles! Yu Wan took the phone over and told her to call me back later. Chau Wang said that his dessert was not successful and I jokingly said that I somehow expected it to be so. =P

I cut the cake and distributed to everyone. It was a marble cheese cake – it reminded me of the day that big sis suggested to buy a marble cheese cake for my mother when she and my 3 other friends went to my house at KB last year. The marble cheese cake I had was different; it seemed like there was some caramel inside. Yummy!

What followed was the ‘prize giving ceremony’. I got a big gold teddy bear, a handmade card ‘created by Deakineses’, a bottle of Ribena and two photos! Haha...never expect to get a teddy bear as my present!

I have quite a few soft toys but this is the first gold teddy bear I own! =D


The bottle is made of plastic instead of glass.

Card 'created by Deakineses'. Comment by Yeu Sheng: it looks like a combination of Deepavali and Hari Raya card coz of the candles and colours...

There’s a 3D cake inside! The quote 'The heart that loves is forever young' was the one I found from somewhere and sent it to the Deakin Sayang Group earlier this year!

The wishes they wrote in the card were funny! There were even 3 translations of Daniel’s wish (in English) at the last page of the card, Chinese translation by Yeu Sheng (揾底裤= wonderful, plus she added '本祝福语皆真心话，如有雷同，纯属巧合'), Hokkien translation by Chean Ying (lu eh hokkien bei pai wor, jin jia 9696) and Malay translation by Nooi Hoay (undang-undang yang baru digubal? Jangan harap saya akan cakap perlahan sikit sebab itu sudah menjadi kebiasaan saya =P) and Cheng Khoon, when did my name become 切西瓜 (Jessica) =.=

The party ended with a few pictures at around 3am. What I wanna say is: thank you everybody! It’s the latest birthday celebration I ever had! *hugss hugss*

p/s: Chau Wang later told me that it was all part of the plan to trick me to go downstairs when he asked me for the oven tray to make dessert. Too bad he failed; I’m so not easily tricked okay! [I told Yu Wan that I was wondering how they were planning to trick me but Yu Wan said, ‘Yeah there isn’t anything to trick about. You have to cooperate ma…’]

p/s 2: I realised another similarity on 8th September: 365 days ago I ate fries after dinner, and just now we also had fries during lunch…haha…

Also, thanks to people who wished me via sms and mms, calls, Friendster comments and messages, Facebook wall posts and gifts etc.. =D