Track of Time, I Do Not Have It
Happy birthday to me! as the many well-wishers on my Facebook wall have drummed into my head. Yes, I know it's late, very late, but being the absentminded wonder I am, I have the right to put up posts late, yeah? My Facebook wall has never been so active in my memory, which proves a) that the account is less than a year old, b) that the information there on my birthday is less than a year old, or c) that previously nobody noticed and this year they do. I think a) is most likely, since birthday information is one of those fields that takes the least amount of thinking to fill in and so is usually one of those fields that I fill in fairly early. The fields I fill in most rarely are those describe-yourself ones, because I'm no good at doing that.
It's... Monday night, which makes it... let's see, about three days since my birthday was over (a quick glance at my watch-mounted calendar just confirmed that guess). It's one of those things I can never remember--see, the Coconut can't very well fault me for forgetting other dates and anniversaries if I can't even remember my own birthday, eh? As tactics go it's fairly rotten, but hey--I honestly forget my birthday most of the time. It's not like it's anything particularly special anyway; in DnD at least there's age categories and associated feats, up/downgrades, etc, but here (I mean, of course, the real world) there's not that much in the way of obvious change between the day-before-the-birthday and the-day-of-the-birthday (which in itself is a very clunky phrase).
In fact I think this trait is getting quite widely broadcasted (and I'm helping that along right now), since on Saturday night the Coconut's family got out a cake, stuck four candles on it, and we all sang along and I was somewhat surprised when my name came up in the [insert name here] part; I was slightly expecting it really since I (as far as I knew) was the only person having a birthday at the time.
In any case I've certainly got white hairs, as my cousins proved to me some months ago and as I was forcibly reminded by the mirror just now--there's a strand in my fringe that I just don't have the fine motor skills to pluck out. I've not got wrinkles yet; I've gotten maybe a little tanned from the swimming, but it's not shown itself in redistribution of my body mass yet; and I've definitely lost a lot of whatever piano skills I may have ever possessed. Aging never was a good thing as far as I was concerned really... it's more of a hassle than anything else if you ask me, but this is one of those things that you can't escape any more than taxes. (And that suddenly stirred up in me the urge to listen to For Now, from Avenue Q.)
The Coconut has given me a couple gifts, and another friend gave me a lot of chocolate foods (chocolate-covered cherries! brownies! one other item I can't remember!), and none of those have been opened... yes, the Coconut... oh, yes, this illustrates the importance of a good sense of chronology, eh? I travelled up to KL on Saturday, the day after my birthday: thus the actual day of my birthday was largely spent asleep, then doing some housework (as opposed to homework)--laundry, general tidying up (though I doubt Crazy Scary will have noticed any change in that direction)--and then there was lab class, during which I got a very nice little hand made of hydroxyapatite and painted in glue, and then there was the packing to be done before the trip the next morning.
I travelled for about seven hours on Saturday, and again I must say (as I've said quite a few times already) that the new Customs office is a huge drain on people's time, even if having it around was a huge necessity for the egoes of whoever is in charge of these things. Two Customs, one on each end of a little bridge, and both containing huge long queues... hardly the picture of efficiency, but then it's tough to get two countries to agree to make one joint office, eh? People will be people, and politicians enjoy showing off their human side more than most; in fact I'd say politicians are about as human as the Brats are, and show it too.
In any case it's the recess week at the moment, a sort of milestone that means half the semester has gone by and I should be about half-ready for the final exams--but I'm not, of course. Heck, I'm not even half-ready for the weekly tutorials, which wring the brain and leave very nearly no free time on weekends unless one procrastinates or types very fast or has a support group to trade answers with... the only tradeoff is that the support group doesn't necessarily know how to do those questions you don't, of course.
And here I am, with a formal laboratory report plus a normal laboratory report plus a 2,500-word-essay (I've chosen my topic to be the developments and differences in Bible translation principles and techniques, since the lecturer suggested that) plus two tutorials that are more or less sure to be un-do-able without a lot of time and brain-wringing... very frightening stuff all of it, really.
So... yeah, birthday's come, birthday's gone, I'm still me so don't ask if I've changed because I'll just tell you to ask somebody who's in a position to observe and I'm certainly not able to watch myself, and I'm still busy--bah!
It's... Monday night, which makes it... let's see, about three days since my birthday was over (a quick glance at my watch-mounted calendar just confirmed that guess). It's one of those things I can never remember--see, the Coconut can't very well fault me for forgetting other dates and anniversaries if I can't even remember my own birthday, eh? As tactics go it's fairly rotten, but hey--I honestly forget my birthday most of the time. It's not like it's anything particularly special anyway; in DnD at least there's age categories and associated feats, up/downgrades, etc, but here (I mean, of course, the real world) there's not that much in the way of obvious change between the day-before-the-birthday and the-day-of-the-birthday (which in itself is a very clunky phrase).
In fact I think this trait is getting quite widely broadcasted (and I'm helping that along right now), since on Saturday night the Coconut's family got out a cake, stuck four candles on it, and we all sang along and I was somewhat surprised when my name came up in the [insert name here] part; I was slightly expecting it really since I (as far as I knew) was the only person having a birthday at the time.
In any case I've certainly got white hairs, as my cousins proved to me some months ago and as I was forcibly reminded by the mirror just now--there's a strand in my fringe that I just don't have the fine motor skills to pluck out. I've not got wrinkles yet; I've gotten maybe a little tanned from the swimming, but it's not shown itself in redistribution of my body mass yet; and I've definitely lost a lot of whatever piano skills I may have ever possessed. Aging never was a good thing as far as I was concerned really... it's more of a hassle than anything else if you ask me, but this is one of those things that you can't escape any more than taxes. (And that suddenly stirred up in me the urge to listen to For Now, from Avenue Q.)
The Coconut has given me a couple gifts, and another friend gave me a lot of chocolate foods (chocolate-covered cherries! brownies! one other item I can't remember!), and none of those have been opened... yes, the Coconut... oh, yes, this illustrates the importance of a good sense of chronology, eh? I travelled up to KL on Saturday, the day after my birthday: thus the actual day of my birthday was largely spent asleep, then doing some housework (as opposed to homework)--laundry, general tidying up (though I doubt Crazy Scary will have noticed any change in that direction)--and then there was lab class, during which I got a very nice little hand made of hydroxyapatite and painted in glue, and then there was the packing to be done before the trip the next morning.
I travelled for about seven hours on Saturday, and again I must say (as I've said quite a few times already) that the new Customs office is a huge drain on people's time, even if having it around was a huge necessity for the egoes of whoever is in charge of these things. Two Customs, one on each end of a little bridge, and both containing huge long queues... hardly the picture of efficiency, but then it's tough to get two countries to agree to make one joint office, eh? People will be people, and politicians enjoy showing off their human side more than most; in fact I'd say politicians are about as human as the Brats are, and show it too.
In any case it's the recess week at the moment, a sort of milestone that means half the semester has gone by and I should be about half-ready for the final exams--but I'm not, of course. Heck, I'm not even half-ready for the weekly tutorials, which wring the brain and leave very nearly no free time on weekends unless one procrastinates or types very fast or has a support group to trade answers with... the only tradeoff is that the support group doesn't necessarily know how to do those questions you don't, of course.
And here I am, with a formal laboratory report plus a normal laboratory report plus a 2,500-word-essay (I've chosen my topic to be the developments and differences in Bible translation principles and techniques, since the lecturer suggested that) plus two tutorials that are more or less sure to be un-do-able without a lot of time and brain-wringing... very frightening stuff all of it, really.
So... yeah, birthday's come, birthday's gone, I'm still me so don't ask if I've changed because I'll just tell you to ask somebody who's in a position to observe and I'm certainly not able to watch myself, and I'm still busy--bah!
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