21st of August is indeed my special day. I wait for it every year but don't expect anything much out of it. My birthday has always been celebrated in the simplest of manners. However, this year, for the first time, I experienced it in a different way.
As in my last blog post, I was in Cameron Highlands during my birthday. On the night prior to my birthday, everyone was sitting in the living room. The kids were playing with the iPads and the rest were just watching television.
After sometime, I realized that the situation got a little awkward because everyone was just sitting around and no one was really doing anything. That kind of gave me the hint that they were waiting to wish me on the stroke of midnight.
The alarm on my sister's watch signalled that it was 12 and officially my birthday. Then all my relatives wished me one by one. Deep down my heart, I was hoping that there would be some surprise or something like that but it never came. I was quite ok with it because I'm used to not having surprises during my birthday.
A few minutes later as everyone was making their way into their beds, I received a text message from one of my friends. The text was pretty long and it came as a surprise because I've never seen him typing long messages before. It was quite a meaningful message to me. Then, as I was about to sleep, another friend rang up to me to wish me for my birthday.
I woke up on the morning of my birthday as usual, breathing in the cool high altitude air while doing my morning stretching exercises. After lunch, my family planned to go to the waterfall after checking out of our apartment. I wasn't really interested in joining in because I would have to change my clothes again if I got wet but it turned out to be the total opposite.
As we reached the waterfall, I thought that maybe I should just go and see the kids playing. When I was at the waterfall, I told myself "I should just go dip my leg in the water for a while". Then, I guess you know what followed. I joined in with the kids and made all my family members wet as well. It's kind of fun being childish once in a while. Since I wasn't that wet, I was too lazy to change and decided to just return home in the same clothes.
After a tiring journey due to the traffic jam, I finally reached home sweet home. As I was in my room, my mum knocked on my room door and asked me to come out. When I opened the door, there stood my whole family clutching their presents for me in their hands. My mum gave me a T-shirt and my sister gave me two. This came as a surprise to me as I thought that they wouldn't have gotten me anything as we were in Cameron Highlands.
The next day, my friends called me out for dinner. It was supposed to be a Prodigy reunion. I was really happy to meet up with some friends whom I hadn't met for quite some time.. We talked for a while before ordering our food.
As the food arrived one by one at the table, I was getting really hungry. Why wasn't I eating? It's because we friends decided to wait for everyone's food to be served at the table before we started eating. The food was there but the 2 of my friends were missing. They said that they wanted to buy something and hadn't returned and I was getting freaking hungry.
Then, I saw two figures walking towards the restaurant from quite some distance away. One of them was holding a box in his hand. I gave a guess and a good guess it was. It was a birthday cake for me.
When my friends called me out for dinner, I wasn't expecting them to buy a cake for the occasion. So, for the first time ever in my life, my friends had celebrated my birthday. That was one of the happiest moments of my life.
After dinner, while having the cake, all of sudden, we came up with an idea. I can't really recall how it happened but we just started talking about some important stories in our lives. Everyone took turns to be asked one question and he had to answer it. The questions were mostly on why we made certain decisions in life and about our past relationships. During that time, all of us really got to know each one of us even better.
Wondering how come my family didn't celebrate my birthday with a cake? Well, first, they were tired after returning from Cameron Highlands. Secondly, for my birthday celebration at home, I always want the cake to be baked by my mum and not to be bought form the shop. So, on Saturday, my mum baked a wonderful orange cake for me and we celebrated it at home.
My birthday this year was a totally different affair compared to the previous years. It has always been simple and specially for me. This year, there were quite a number of surprises and I have to say I enjoyed every bit of it. I just want to say thank you to my family members and friends for making this year's birthday my most awesome one so far.................
