My 26th birthday and how I almost killed myself (taking Boy with me).

My birthday wasn't too bad this year. Brother #3 came over on Thursday for a visit and bought me an iPod Nano because I've been looking into getting an mp3 player and the 5th gen Nano has FM radio too in case I get bored of my mp3 collection. ^^

It's well purty. And I got it in bright pink because I figured no self-respecting straight male will want to mug that off me. Plus it means I'm unlikely to lose it in the house because anything pink will definitely not be Boy's.

CR and JL from work bought me a bottle of Irish Cream liquor and cards on Saturday, and JL gave me an extra AA Guide to London book because I told her about Boy and I doing a bit of touristing in London in September. Arrived home to find that I got birthday cards from MJ and Honorary Parents too. Also got £50 Bravissimo voucher in my email from Boy's parents despite my telling them they don't have to get me anything.

Sunday, had breakfast in bed and then we went out shopping for something Boy can get me for my birthday because he says I'm difficult to buy for. This is what we ended up getting:

Diamond and sapphire necklace.

It matches my diamond and sapphire gold ring, and I thought Mum would approve of the design looking like an 8. :P Oh, and our new house is number 8 too. Haha. I promise this is all just a coincidence though, I'm not being your typical Chinese person putting too much emphasis on a lucky number.

Because we ended up not really spending anything on my present after all (due to an unexpected 0% finance plan), I bullied Boy into buying himself some summer clothes because all he has are plain crewneck black Ts and jeans. I know he's bored of his usual look but his newest clothes were his merino wool jumpers from last December, which is pretty unpractical for the summer, and he kept insisting that he doesn't want to spend money since he's "not flush". I swear, the boy is getting thriftier than I am sometimes.

So I dragged him into Debenhams for a shopping trip - not for me, for once - and reassured him that it won't cost more than £50 to get him some decent summer shirts. He didn't believe me, of course.

We ended up getting three T-shirts (grey, slate blue and black with different necklines/subtle designs) and a black semi-casual button-front shirt that he can wear for nights out, all from the usual lot of high street designer labels he bought from last winter (Red Herring, Rocha John Rocha, J by Jasper Conran). And the total price? £49.80.

I was riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. ;)

Anyway, after much gloating of my right-ness (just kidding), we dumped all our stuff at the apartment and went off go-karting at ELK. We haven't been for over a year, and I know Boy loves go-karting and I am technically making him miss the F1 race, the England vs Germany football game and Top Gear all on the same day (my birthday is so awesome, everyone wants to put their events on that day!), so we may as well make it worth his while instead of his original plan to bring me to Nottingham for a bit of clothes shopping (which he will get incredibly bored with, I am sure, despite his noble intentions). Plus, Brother #3 had never been go-karting and we kept saying that we'd take him.

Boy all racer-like in his suit.

It was fun as usual, and somewhere near the end of our 30-minute session, I had a head-on collision with the crash barriers at one of the tighter corners, sending one of those white plastic separator barriers flying through the air directly towards the opposite lane, where Boy was heading towards at high speed (those 4-stroke go-karts we were driving gets to a maximum of around 49mph). Let's just say it's a bloody good thing he has better reaction speed and managed an evasive maneuver to avoid the huge flying object landing directly in his racing line, otherwise it would've landed right on top of him.

After I was saved from my stuck position and resumed the rest of the session, I continued on and by the time we finished and pitted, everyone was looking at my tyres. They were wrecked. The rubber was all cracked and bubbly from the hot sun and hot tarmac, but whilst everyone else had some tyre wear, they were nothing like my four wheels, as there were hardly anymore layers of rubber to go through. Just shows how much hard-braking/accelerating and drifting I do around the corners. I did notice as we were driving that bits of black rubber were flying all over the place, and I pity whomever who was stuck behind me because that meant they got a faceful of black rubber bits.

Boy reckons that my crash was due to my tyres being worn out to that extent since it was at the later half of the session, and even with his own tyres (that were less worn than mine) he was understeering quite a bit. I knew I turned the steering wheel at the point where I crashed but the kart just wouldn't turn much. Tried to drift it around when I realised it wasn't turning enough and the kart still wouldn't have any of it. It made up its mind it was going to crash, and I was just a passenger at that point.

I was unhurt, which is the important bit, but man, woke up today feeling pretty bruised and battered! I have bruises from where the plastic catch on my bra straps dug into my shoulder blades during the impact of the crash that sent me flat against the plastic bucket seat and my arms really ache from the non-power steering of those karts.

Back to Sunday though.

Camwhoring before going out.

Boy and I outside our apartment block. My eyes were seriously puffy due to contact lens solution reaction! :(

Brother #3 and I at the Lincoln Grille.

We went out for dinner at the Lincoln Grille (we almost didn't though, but that story is for Boy to tell and not me) and I wasn't as impressed as I was the last time I was there. They removed my favourite starter haddock and saffron risotto with soft poached egg and lemon butter sauce, and replaced it with spring vegetable risotto.

Spring vegetable risotto.

Yes, I did order that, but it was so bland and disappointing, nothing at all like what I had before. Even salt and pepper couldn't save it. For my main, I had cod.

Poached fillet of cod in creamy Vermouth sauce.

Which was also pretty disappointing because it just tasted bland, like I bought a fillet of frozen cod from the supermarket and plonked it on a steamer with no seasoning whatsoever. It was served on a bed of equally bland spinach with mussels and clams on the side, which just tasted very fishy and really put me off my food. Some lemon juice wouldn't have gone amiss. And it was supposed to have oyster mushrooms... does it look like it has mushrooms? No.

I can cook better than this, and I'm not a restaurant chef. I ended up wishing I had a large dollop of tartare sauce.

I ordered dessert anyway, raspberry crème brûlée with a shortcake biscuit and that was the best course I had (but still nothing special... you can probably get better with Tesco Finest range).

Raspberry crème brûlée.

However, I didn't get to finish it because I was feeling pretty full at this point, though I don't know if that fullness is a side-effect (stomach-shrinking) of dieting, or because my two courses prior had just ruined my appetite for the night.

Brother #3 and Boy seemed to like their food fine since there were no complaints from either of them, so maybe I just have bad luck. :)

Brother #3's starter: Chargrilled asparagus tips with parma ham.

Boy's starter: Minted new potatoes.

Brother #3's main: Cornfed chicken breast morel mushroom sauce.

Boy played it safe with our usual fillet steak with pepper sauce for his main (which I think was a good idea) and had mint choc chip ice cream for dessert, whilst Brother #3 had the crème brûlée for dessert as well.

Speaking of complaints, one of the waitress was really mardy and seemed to grunt out single-syllable words instead of talking, so I complained about her to Boy and Brother #3 whilst she was still in earshot. Surprisingly, the service became much more pleasant afterwards.

Brother #3 made me a cheesecake for my birthday, which we were unfortunately too full to eat at the end of the night. But we're so going to eat it today after dinner of chicken rendang. Look at how pretty it is!

Homemade cheesecake!

I'm so spoilt. :P

In sync.

My mother always said that there will come a day when my childhood friends and I will have nothing in common. They will move to different places, meet new friends, get married, have babies, and generally be too busy with their own lives to think about those lost days. In a way, that has happened. I mean, where are we now? Most aren't even in Kemaman anymore. We're in KL, Singapore, India, Arab, Australia, the UK, the US... apparently anywhere but home.

But unlike everyone else, I think I might be the only person who is going to be settling abroad for good. Everyone else seems to have some sort of plan to move back in the future.

Whilst I am happy with my life here, sometimes I do miss the simpler days when friends were only a walk or a bicycle ride away. Even in college, friends weren't far. The entire city didn't turn into a ghost town once the clock ticks 5.30pm - it wakes up with a new face. And I miss the free and easy lifestyle of mamak-ing at night with friends - when the weather is cooling down, the food and drinks are cheap and plentiful. Even the freedom of going out and picking up a mindblowingly yummy Ramlee burger for RM2-RM3 per burger I miss. Eating out here for the both of us typically costs us around £15-£20 if we're behaving, a lot more if we're not. McDonald's is around £8 each time we go. And we can't afford that sort of thing regularly.

I feel so solitary and restricted sometimes because going out almost invariably means spending more money that I should.

I miss my friends.

I miss the food.

I miss mamak-ing.

But I don't know if I could give up all that I have here to go back to that. It is tempting, but what I have here is a sure thing. Life here is reliable. I have a stable salaried job, I have a boy who wants to marry me, I will soon own my own home (albeit with a lot of debt), I am gradually losing my Malaysian accent and my Manglish-ness and blending in with the locals, I have a pension. Hell, I even have a credit rating!

I have none of this in Malaysia. I wouldn't know where my paycheque would come from. I wouldn't have a house. Or a pension. And my boy does not speak the other language that is almost essential in securing a job in Malaysia. I don't even know how easily I would ease back into speaking Malay or Mandarin - I've not spoken either of them in such a long time.

I know my mother has a plan. She would like me to go back and get into the family business. She would also like to recruit Boy to deal with the paperwork/technical side of things, non-customer facing jobs, so language wouldn't be a barrier (though Boy is pretty skilled at picking up languages, given time and practice). But I'm pretty sure Boy's mother will be crushed if we were to move abroad - he has a much closer relationship with his mother than I have with mine. And speaking of that, I will probably row with my parents every single day if I were to live close to home.

It has happened. I don't miss the rows, the anger, the tears.

I don't miss the heat, the scorching sun baking our sweat onto our skin.

I don't miss the mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches, and other insects you see on a regular basis in Malaysia.

I don't miss the cost of owning an air-conditioner, the cost of electricity it uses and the frequent breakdowns it invariably will go through.

I don't miss the traffic jams and the subsequent overheating cars.

I don't miss family gatherings with my extended relatives.

So I guess the cons list may have trumped the pros list there. Perhaps after we get to the stage where Boy's parents are... where they can sell off their property, retire in, say, Malaysia and never have to work again for the rest of their lives. Perhaps we would be tempted then. :)

It's nice to know, though, that despite being far-flung to so many different places, we're still at the same stage in life. We're 25 years old, in long-term/serious relationships, we are out of school and employed, we are buying our first properties. It's quite incredible, isn't it?

Busy, busy weeks ahead!

We're moving in 9 days! Can't you feel the excitement?

Heh. We are collecting our keys next Thursday, and we can go give the house a lookover and maybe move some bits and bobs over before the main move on the 19th (when BG will loan us her Land Rover to move some of the bigger items over, such as the TV). Not entirely sure where we'll be living until we complete the move, since we still have the lease on the apartment until 7th July. I reckon we'll be living wherever the internet is active at. ;) And maybe survive off takeaway and pizza until we finalise our move.

After we've moved most of our stuff, I'll have to remember to give the apartment a good clean out before handing back the keys, which I can do since I do have a week off end of June where I won't be doing very much at all. Am trying to organise a sort-of housewarming/birthday barbecue thing on the 26th, but not sure how well that will turn out. :) Brother #3 is coming over though and Boy has told me he has got the day off work for 27th, so at the very least, I'll have two people to celebrate my birthday with.

Speaking of excitement though, Boy is pretty excited about picking up his new car tomorrow. I won't actually be able to see it until something like 11pm on Saturday though because he's going down to see his family straight after picking up the car tomorrow and then returning home on Saturday and then going straight to work. I know, he's mad, but you know how it is with men and cars. :P