the expected birthday post

First order of the day: first paper of the sem: intro to computing at 9am. Quite ok lah, throughout the paper depending on how much i understood of each question at that point on time my mind was alternating repeatedly between "boy am i glad i s/u-ed this module" and "shucks i should have just left it as graded". But in the end, what's done is done, and God has seen me through, that's all i could ask for really. Passing shouldn't be any problem lah... Finally the first paper is out of the way =)

Rather mundane revision followed after that at the central library 6th floor as usual, using a different approach to revision this time since the next paper (HY2250) is open book. My first ever history open book paper... Am surprisingly calm...

So went for dinner and i was midway through my potato salad (what better meal for this self-professed jiak kentang to eat?) when out of nowhere popped Mei Si, a cake, and the happy birthday song. Now, i'd be lying if i were to say that i was 100% surprised, in fact was rather expecting it (when you play a part in so many other people's birthday surprises, you develop a certain intuition about such things), but Joel did do a good job throwing me off guard for a moment when i sensed something fishy going on behind my back... Anyway, for anyone reading this who was there, thanks again, really do appreciate it, am not hamming it up when i say that i treasure the friendship of every single one of you, the cake was quite good too =P

After that, was just talking with Fern and Alicia at the canteen when Lizhen popped by with her English-Chinese dictionaries, cos she'd just had her translation exam. So there i was casually flipping through one of them when i came across "jie tuo" (i forget the intonation) and recalled that that's the name of an A* Mei song that i like. Dunno how things sprang out of this, but soon we were recalling and singing all sorts of chinese songs from all places, such as Jeff Chang's "guo4 huo3", the theme songs from the unbeatables 1 & 2, the duet between William So and Kit Chan "ai de zheng hao (?)", the chen2 xiao3 dong1 song that was the theme song of one channel 8 hospital show many years back, and many others. It was quite fun, i must say, and Alicia especially was rather amused that i knew so many chinese songs.

How do i know so many?
Two main reasons, watching channel 8 shows and therefore listening to their theme songs and living in close proximity to army buddies for extended periods of time (there was a point in time when i could practically sing the whole of one each of Jay Chou's and Stefanie Sun's albums thanks to my bunk mates playing them on and on and on and on).
How much of what i am singing do i understand?
Close to zilch (though from Lizhen's dictionary, i gather that "jie tuo" means something like "end"... [maybe that's why i can memorise so many of the lyrics - cos my brain doesn't bother to understand what they mean so more storage capacity...])

Anyways, once again, thanks to all the birthday well-wishers, from here and abroad. Hmm realise that if all goes according to plan, my next birthday will be spent overseas... Interesting.