30

That's what I am today.

It's a working day as usual. I went to the office with two bags of cakes and shared them in the office. It's a tradition here to buy cakes if it's your birthday. It's the other way round in Malaysia.

I am also taking the opportunity to thank almost 18 million of you who have text, sent a card, a present, emailed or left birthday greetings in my Facebook today. Special thanks to my parents, brother, Ann Jet, Irene and Raymond who called or tried calling all the way from Malaysia. It was very nice of you!

In the evening I went to a talk by Priti. She was giving a presentation of her PhD research on slum networking to an audience from the International Development Network. It was an interesting topic. Oh what nerd I am, you must be thinking! Going for a talk on my birthday???

Priti doing her presentation

No, but we went out for dinner afterwards. Joan, Owen, Winson, Priti and I had Chinese in one of the nearby restaurants. We also took the opportunity to celebrate Owen's farewell before he leaves for Sudan on an international mission next week.

Owen demonstrating the right way to use chopsticks in Sudan

Saturday was the greater deal.

That was when I actually celebrated my birthday. There was a twist. I jointly celebrated my birthday with Amy. Amy is another Malaysian whom I met here.

Her birthday passed recently and she was supposed to celebrate her birthday with her friends on the same day. I thought it would be nice to have a joint celebration. Doing this jointly not only eliminated the guilt of not attending her event or her attending mine, but also created a great opportunity for both our friends to know each other.

Have you not heard the song "The more we get together"?

"...cause your friends are my friends and my friends are your friends
The more we get together the happier we'll be."

My friends are your friends

and your friends are my friends

There were 11 of us. We celebrated our birthdays in New Tayyabs which was a cross between a Pakistan and Punjab restaurant. The place was in Whitechapel, East London.

Whitechapel is well known for the murders of Jack the Ripper at the end of the 19th century. What else? Seedy activities like illegal trading and prostitution. It's probably like Chow Kit serving good nasi padang or Pudu, lovely curry fish head but let's not get into that now. The food in New Tayyabs was excellent. It was also highly rated in the reviews.

Since it was lunch, we proceeded to Priti's after Whitechapel. We had a relaxing time there. Not only was she kind enough to lend her place but also served us tea, coffee and snacks. Gina joined us in between.

We hanged out for a couple of hours before we left.

That's my 30th birthday report.