Sunday, June 27, 2004

The Gift of Knowledge

So, the birthday came and went rather quietly. But it was nice being surrounded by people who genuinely cared enough to spend it with me. I got a whole slew of sms-es and emails wishing me happy birthday and my family, especially Dan, really rose to the occasion as well.

I think when the birthday is spent in the company of people whom you love and love you, becoming a year older doesn't seem to be as daunting a task. And I count myself blessed to have been able to have to done so for the last two days.

Yesterday morning, I spent time at Mango, my favourite fashion house. Unfortunately, I had once again underestimated the frenzy that went hand in hand with the sale. A store that usually opened at the sane and reasonable hour of 10 am opened its doors at 8 with a path specifically leading to just Mango and no where else. So, by the time I got there at 10, when the rest of the store opened, there were enough mad women in Mango to lay end to end and walk the length of our small, but not that small island. I was shoved and I guess, from some other poor soul's point of view, I shoved as well. Also, I kind of got tripped and transferred some MAC lipstick on some poor unknowing shopper's shirt. Ooops.

After that, my fellow Mango groupie and I met Daniel for tea and tea is always nice. The only problem was that dinner was meant to start an hour and a half after tea ended. Precious little time for the both of us to digest tea enough for dinner. Having dinner with the family was nice apart from the moment where I had to justify to my "accusing-me- of-being-lazy-but-actually-just-cannot-understand-why-people-travel" father why it was necessary for me to go away on holiday and how I wasn't really doing anything wrong and it was my god-given right, although some young, know it all, upstarts may beg to defer.

What was nice, was some of the gifts I got. While money is also very very nice, especially in these post holiday lean times, I got books. Quite a few actually and they're all things that I want to read. Only problem now is that I'm spoilt for choice and don't know where to begin.

There's Choice of Evil that I'm half way through and have been half way through since March when I first bought it.

And then, there's
1) Mao's Dancer- an account of this Chinese-Australian dancer that I've actually seen in action at the Australian Ballet
2) An autobiography of a one year old- my sister in law's attempt at trying to interest me in kids
3) Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward- from my brother who still remembers how as an 18 year old, ten years ago, Oh goodness!, I sat him down and asked him to decipher a slew of acronymns for me. They included SLBM, SS-10s, MIRVs, SOUSSUS and many other military related terms. My other brother's ex, Jo, could talk rugby and apparently, I could talk military hardware and American politics.
4) A Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night Time- from my other brother who is contrite for making me read the rather badly written DaVinci's Code during my trip.

So, four books, plus the one I'm reading now and another one that I was supposed to borrow from YM. I hate being spoilt for choice because I really don't know which to read first. Plus the exam marking comes in on Monday! Argh!

Ondine tossed this thought in at 00:34

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