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I used to have this incredibly wild and outrageous desire to forget that it’s my birthday on the day itself–just have everyone surprise me out of it or feel so shocked and overwhelmed when I receive a birthday greeting. I just thought it would be nice to not expect anything at all and just enjoy it as the day unfolds, without the precursor anticipation of extraordinariness.

But that’s a long shot, so I just return to my usual birthday wish of having a pretty good day. As I grew older, I found myself feeling anxious for my birthday. It’s like I have this gravitational tendency to expect my day to be a notch higher than the ordinary, hoping that there’s at least one special something that can make me reach the conclusion of a granted birthday wish. But certainly, not all birthdays are worth remembering. So this is expectation/hope versus reality all over again. It’s my day, I just want to feel like it’s really mine, you know?

For the past few years, there have been birthday ups and downs. I was entered into a writing contest one time while I had to cram a Psychology paper for another. And there were a few sad birthdays too, with wrong decisions and tears. But I learned to just make the most out of the day, trying hard to let go of expectations because after all, I have a whole year’s worth of happy thoughts to celebrate my birthday by. October 11s need not be perfect because there have been epic tales from October 12 to October 10. October 11 is just the conclusion and the introduction.

This year, it was just right. It was just another usual day at work (first birthday as a working girl!) but my teammates surprised me with a cake! I just felt right at home then because I wasn’t really expecting anything. I was actually working around that time, intensely focused on the e-mail report I had to send when they came over to my desk and just started singing happy birthday. It was a typical day but it was overflowing with a whole lot of love, what with all the birthday greetings and wishes I received.

And that’s that for this year, goodbye teenage years!

Posted in Red-Letter Days | 1 Comment »

I’ve always wanted a pretty room and I’m determined for it to be a part of my future. Someday, I want an MTV Cribs-worthy house and a cozy room to chill in after a long day. A walk in closet, a miniature library, pretty walls… I can already live in the thought! For the meantime, these are my inspirations:

{ via 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }

Posted in Lists | 2 Comments »

If calories were friends, Diabetes non-existent and fat greeted in the most welcoming manner, I’d eat the sad days away. I’ll live life like the movies where a bad day can be cured by a giant tub of ice cream, all for myself. If only, if only! Here’s a list of foods I’m most likely to crave for and could probably turn a frown into a smile, if nutritional value were suddenly out of the picture:

1. Meiji Kinoko chocolate-topped biscuits
2. Chef Tony’s Dark Chocolate popcorn
3. Conti’s Mango Bravo cake
4. Brooklyn Pizza White Pizza
5. Charlie’s burger and fries
6. McDonald’s French fries
7. Krispy Kreme
8. Royce chocolate
9. Kirkland chocolate covered raisins
10. Oishi Pillows

Did you get the pattern? I’m a chocolate lover!

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After a long day at work, I see it to it that I get to do things that I like doing. It’s a way of de-stressing and unwinding, loosening up after a day of rumbling it out with numbers and figures. Here are some of the things that make me look forward to going home after work:

1. Playing Plants vs Zombies Game of the Year Edition.
2. Watching episodes of my favorite TV series!
3. Taking on my current pile of to-read books! (Currently reading Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd)
4. Listening to an awesome set of music.
5. Playing Family Feud on Facebook.
6. Fixing my things and files in my computer. Yes, I consider that a form of relaxation.
7. Looking through the Tumblr posts of people I follow.
8. Reading e-mails/messages from my best friends.
9. Blogging when I have something to blog about.
10. Writing in my journal.

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9 years ago was a tragedy that marked everyone across the globe. Some families who lost their loved ones on that day carry a heavy rock of grief. It was something sudden and so difficult to understand. And we feel for them. Several people may not have experienced a loss from 9/11 but we have the scars. That day told us about life and loss and the unpredictability that stands in between. We learned so many things from that, just by seeing something so surreal on TV. We were so distant, in a way that we could not believe it was real at all but by hearing the stories, seeing the footage and witnessing how the story unfolded, we took it in bit by bit. We believed, and it made us terribly sad.

When I traveled to New York, I saw the ruins. I never got to saw the World Trade Center when it was still there. All I saw was this:

From the ruins, they will rebuild, and one day, other buildings will stand in its place. But nothing could ever take back what happened or bring back the people we lost on that day.

So today we remember 9/11 and how much love there was on that day, because that day reminded us that lives are precious… and that you’d rather give all the love you can give on the days that the person you want to give it to can still actively receive it.

Looking back and rewinding 9 years, I’d like to share 3 contemporary works of fiction that have been created as a way of dealing with that day and exploring the ruins that it left not on Ground Zero, but the ruins that it left on people’s lives:

1. Jonathan Safran Foer – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Book)
   This book is among my favorites and it could easily top the list. While reading it, I wanted to wring my heart of tears because it felt so heavy. It was written so beautifully because the emotions were in the words. It’s not the kind of sad that makes you depressed but the kind of sad that makes you want to move. This book has a lot of wisdom and sentences made out of real human emotion. Everything was so moving and beautiful. More than that, it all felt so sincere, honest, true.
2. Remember Me (Movie)
   I initially didn’t know that this movie touched on that event. But it did. And it’s a really good movie because it made you think about things and your relationships. That was where the movie aced it—relationships. Girlfriend boyfriend, friend, and family… how you create them, break them, and mend them. It reminded me a lot of The Catcher in the Rye. It’s really worth your time.
3. David Levithan - Love is the Higher Law (Book)
   David Levithan is one of my all time favorite authors. This is one of his most recently published books but as I am still waiting for the paperback version to be released, I haven’t read it yet. Because I cannot give my thoughts on it yet, here’s what they thought: “David Levithan has written a novel of loss and grief, but also one of hope and redemption as his characters slowly learn to move forward in their lives, despite being changed forever.”

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