2 to 40

It doesn’t seem so long ago when I was counting down the number of years I had left to the magical “30” years old!

So, to now be just 2 years to 40 years old gives me plenty of mixed feelings. On the one hand, I still don’t look my age, with the occasional student or colleague surprised when they discover that I’m not as young as I look. On the other hand, you really do feel yourself getting old, more tired easily, and your bones ache a lot more than they used to. I’m just glad that I don’t fall ill frequently at all, and the most severe ailment I get in my line of work is just coughing.

In any case, Ling had been thinking hard about what presents to get for my 38th birthday today. Her job was made the more tougher also because I usually do mail collection, and on one occasion, one of the three presents she got arrived through snail mail on one of my daily collections LOL.

All the three presents above are actually quite work centric and that I’d use them everyday. There’s a square cushion with one of my favorite pictures of Hannah giggling, and a very special mug (also with Hannah on it) that changes color and only shows its picture when it’s filled with hot fluids. Ling’s gonna have to help explain the science behind that! The last present was a replacement leather keypouch for one I’ve been using for 5 years now, and about in pieces with all but one of the key link chains already broken.

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Dinner was a quiet affair between the three of us. I was pretty dead beat after getting home from work, spending the entire 11 hours in the office today printing maps of Kumamoto, reading through and checking my lecture and workshop materials, adding in new activities and content, creating a new web site for the students next week (trying to introduce IDM-learning elements into the classes) and the like. I didn’t want to travel far and there’s also Hannah and her feeding times to think about too. There wasn’t many nearby choices, so we settled for Hougang Mall – and don’t laugh now, Pizza Hut for my birthday dinner place.

No, I’m not fussy or choosy about my eating places, even for special occasions. We’d already just gone to the nearby Xiao Xuan Feng Chinese restaurant 3 weeks ago for our Wedding Anniversary, and since I will be eating Japanese for the next 9 days, I thought I’d give our local interpretations of that cuisine a miss this time.

There was an interesting menu item at Pizza Hut: their Christmas Edition of the Twist ‘N’ Dunk pizza, and it was actually pretty good. The more amazing when you consider that Ling’s not normally big on pizzas, but she actually liked this one. It’s pizza cut into wedge sizes, and topped with rolled turkey ham and roasted chicken on onion mayonnaise sauce. You break off each wedge, and dip it into cheddar cheese sauce and nacho chips.

As for the night program after we got back home: Hannah had to be fed first, but after that the two of us plopped on to the sofa couch and watched Ridley Scott’s Gladiator: Extended Cut on blu-ray that I’d just picked up. Yeah it’s a semi-old show, and the HD transfer has a couple of issues.

Still, Ling had forgotten most of what the show was about, and put the show to her litmus test on whether it’s any good: she asked “Dear, is this based on a true story…?” :)