hm i was trying to not-blog, in an attempt to rebel against the completely dead tagboard, but i feel like commemorating today in some form. it wasn't particularly eventful, as birthdays go, especially 18th birthdays (i suppose, though being 18 in singapore also means A levels so it isn't exactly much cause for celebration, unless you're choon/claud, december babies.) but despite the un-eventfulness, it was a day to remember, because it was sweet.

it began with birthday greetings from the most unexpected sources, which are the best kind. old classmates, really old classmates, people i sort-of know overhearing very old classmates and then wishing me, friends from india, etc. classmates trying to sing me a birthday song at assembly and shooj going around trying to find random people including batchelor and sean loh isthathowyouspellit to wish me happy birthday and sing me a song, which was majorly embarrassing but really amusing.

oh and then the Admiring of the Ipod, and mark trying to psyche me into regretting it or begin the transition from ipod-my-baby to ipod-my-hateful-teenager because a) the headphones suck and b) the 5th gen ipod's coming out sometime this year and will outclass the rest. but i'm not enough of an audiophile to desire the very best in headphones, and as for waiting, technology's always getting obselete-fied so there's no point in waiting forever, right? in any case i've waited long enough for the perfect ipod, and now i've got it.

lessons: fairly routine, except gp was fascinatingly freaky. jean baudrillard's simulation and simulacra, which has so many manifestations in life it's disturbing. i even noticed it at dinner, which i will mention later because this post attempts to go in chronological order.

on my 18th birthday, the supposed age of defiance and all that, i was definitely not planning on going for pe, so vaish, vivien and i skipped and went to j8. thai express, which was an novel experience but not worth enough to repeat. spicy and very indian-like and a little bit sweet and too little rice. but i'm not much of an asian food person, except indian and a little bit of middle eastern and chinese when there isn't an alternative. especially not south-east asian food, i suppose.

oh that reminds me! mr sowden's very cool -- a vegetarian as fanatic as my parents (as in, ovo-lacto but the type who checks about the stock in soup being vegetarian and all that), and a teetotaller! i told my parents about it a while ago and they were very impressed. it occurs to me that they'd probably find him perfect husband material if he were a boy my age: economics, a subject my parents love, vegetarian, teetotaller, presumably doesn't smoke. only problem is the lack of indian/hindu/brahmin-ness. hahaha but my devotions are devoted to rolly, right?

speaking of devotion to rolly, yesterday kelly tried to get me to name my ipod Rolly, but i decided it would definitely become the subject of more ridicule than i would like, and rolly would find out inevitably because someone would tell him and then he'd smirk and i'd blush and it'd be embarrassing. not, of course, that i ever seriously considered naming it Rolly. i named it The Bride, which is slightly weird but i think it's appropriately cute because my ipod's sexy and white like Uma Thurman as The Bride. i'm in this quentin tarantino phase anyway. and who cares that the white wedding dress ends up with blood all over, she's kickass because she survives the shot to the head and to the chest and everything, so the name will cast an aura around Ipod and protect it. yes, i'm at the ipod-is-baby stage.

ok so we basically wasted the sowden lesson almost entirely, talking about various things. i have lost all hope of a cleanly chronological post!

walked around, bought a thingy to keep my ipod in, had coffee to try and wake self up which didn't work at all, chatted lots with viv and vaish which was nice because i haven't had a nice long conversation with either of them properly in age. we walked around, tried clothes, looked at stuff. was relaxed.

back to school for lit s, which was rather pointless because he just read poems, but purvis does have his way of reading poems so in some sense it was useful. i just wish he'd Lecture like mac, mac's lectures are fascinating.

after that.... back home, fell on bed in a stupor with ipod plugged into ears and complete exhaustion overtaking me. until my uncle called to give me a happy birthday greeting-cum-pep-talk. he was rather sweet about everything. i like talking to my uncle. even when he's on a train commuting to manhattan and is shouting in tamil because the train is noisy and he doesn't want to talk in english because of all the nosy americans around him. it was a nice talk.

and i received a card from daph, which was also unexpected and very nice.

and my mom made gajar halwa, which is this indian carrot sweet thing that i love, and she made it exceptionally well. and after filling my tummy i was getting dressed for dinner, when my mom thrust the phone at me and it was rahul's dad congratulating me! which was so out of the blue, until i realised he was in town and he was on the phone with my mom when he realised it was my birthday and wanted to congratulate me for becoming an adult. so while my uncle had half-jokingly told me that i was legally an adult but emotionally but three years old, rahul's dad told me to go out and Have Some Fun! and then he also peptalked me about universities and college tours and financial aid and rahul's going to do med and he's got into johns hopkins & upenn & tufts and is currently trying to decide which one to go to. i haven't spoken to him in so long. kinda funny, just the other day i noticed some j1 who totally reminds me of him and my brother knows him and also thinks there is a strong rahul resemblance. and i just remembered his birthday is on sunday! he's two days younger than me but he's been driving for two years and he'll be in university a year ahead of me.

yeah so i got peptalked in succession.

and then my dad took AGES finishing up his meetings and getting home, so we finally left and then i realised my granduncle and aunt had invited us over to their place so we had to go there first before dinner, and it was already almost 9! but the good thing was that they gave me money :) and then finally dinner, by which time i was really not hungry because it was almost 10pm and my grandaunt had given us some stuff to eat at their place. but pete's place at the hyatt has the most smiling waiters i've ever seen in my life! so the service alone made it worthwhile, and the menu's predominantly non-veg but they made special stuff for all of us. and the food was pretty good, but i got filled up on soup and the bread buffet (i love bread and they had about 10 tyoes of bread and 3 types of dip and olive oil, could i have resisted?) before the real food arrived, so i suppose i didn't enjoy the meal as much as i would've if it had been at a normal time and if i'd been truly hungry.

oh yes, jean baudrillard reminder at dinner: my dad was trying to tell us about the time he discovered cornflakes or something, and how he'd risen from not knowing how to eat cereal, from such humble beginnings... to eating at pete's place. and then i realised that the decor of pete's place is trying to simulate american country ranches, which are sort of humble. so you have this italian restaurant in a five-star hotel, trying to look like a simple country ranch while charging exorbitant prices for its food. i don't know if i'm right, but i think it parallels the hyperreality theory.

after that... we were all completely stuffed and came back home and it was almost 12, and since then (so far it's been an hour) i've been typing this post, which is getting annoyingly long, and explaining the story of ate_aparna to samjo while demonstrating my scary alias-addiction to mag. example: i get all defensive when i read articles that are negative about the cia? because i think "sydney and vaughn etc do Good Work". but the 'alias-related haze' was thicker in secondary4, the year of the season 2 and the ENDING of season 2. the heartattack-inducing ending. wow that was a kickass season. thinking about that last episode still gives me the shivers.

talking about endings, i should really end Today because Tomorrow i have to go to school in the morning! or Today, really. because it's 115 now.

goodnight!