I was 17.
Now I'm writing a post,
I am 18.
Of course I need to sort of describe how my birthday went.
I didn't expect much the day before my birthday,
although this was, arguably, the most important birthday I was going to have.
And eventually, the day was not an unforgettable or memorable one,
but at least it was much better than my expectation.
Below is how my birthday happened precisely:
0000
I'd expected to have my first wish in the first minute of my 18th.
But I was wrong,
Right after I, alone, count-downed and saw the 2359 changed to 0000,
it was a strange silence in my room.
No notifications from computer. From phone. From i-Pad. From real humans.
-
And then I said to myself: Wow, so this is 18.
Because I guess everyone is like me,
we used to wonder how amazing it was to be 18,
you have total freedom from your parents,
you can legally drink, smoke, buy lottery, party like you literally don't care, drive like a cool kid, and even have sex,
you start to feel certain about your future,
you are publicly acknowledged as an adult and supposedly required to act like a grown human,
but the moment when I turned 18,
I feel nothing.
The excitement of turning into 18 I used to think I would have in the age of 9 didn't take over.
But the silence and emptiness did.
0002
In the middle of contemplating plus stirring my favorite coffee,
my phone rang, finally.
I walked, not rushed, to my room.
It's Zi Xian,
one of my S2SK classmates.
We had a fleeting conversation,
he, as usual, teased me about my pimples and my rumored gay partner.
I teased him back too, with something I now don't remember.
He has one of the most childlike faces in the world,
and he always behaves and talks like a 8-year-old.
Sometimes I wish I could be him,
could be so naive, innocent and simple,
and had a beautiful girlfriend.
0030
Football match started.
My favorite team scored a last-minute goal but only got a draw.
Din't know if I should be happy.
0514
Woke up after 2-hour sleep.
When I opened my door,
my brother said happy birthday to me, not in a surprising way though.
And then he gave me an Angpau, which was quite surprising.
I returned him a thankful smile and started the preparation for school.
School
It was a perfectly normal/mundane/tedious/monotonous/negligible day in school.
Being a birthday guy and not being known by my friends.
So they all treated me ordinarily, not as a special one.
I also didn't want to surprise them with the fact that I had my birthday on that day,
because the outcome would be super awkward - everyone stared at you, being stunned and blank, and then the long awkward silence took over.
It's not like I was concealing the fact,
but there's no necessary to purposely let someone know that.
If they give a damn, they will know. They don't, they won't.
I'm not blaming them as well,
because I don't remember theirs too.
We are just 1-month friends after all.
-
I only received a wish in the school,
from Jason,
because he is the only one in Sunway College knows me more than 1 year.
After school
my friends in Taylor's asked me to go Pyramid to have a simple celebration.
which was indeed quite simple.
We went to Snowflake to have some ice-cream,
and chattered as we usually do when we meet up.
Daniel and Kai Jiet gave me my first present of the day.
I thanked them a lot because it would be weird to go home empty-handed,
and then my mum would ask me if I'd gotten any presents,
so it's good that I could say YES!.
At night
my parents brought me to a japanese restaurant,
to celebrate my birthday.
Luckily the restaurant was rather empty that day,
so I could have my little sing-wish-blow-cut process without drawing any attention from the strangers.
When my family asked me to wish,
and for the first time I spent more than 3 seconds on the wishing process.
Because usually, I would just casually wish that my family and I would be forever healthy.
But then I thought,
if I'd wished that before,
and if God understood what forever means,
I could probably skip one year,
and wish that I could have my beautiful face back.
Eventually, I wished that my family and I would be forever healthy,
again.
I'm old-fashioned, I forgive myself.
Before sleep
When I was about to sleep,
Kingsley messaged me to go to Facebook for a look.
OH MY GOD.
That was the surprise of the night,
my old classmates made me a video,
about 15 of them wished me happy birthday,
with hashtag #weiyinturns18.
I love them.
Although they didn't do awful lot on the video,
the little surprise they'd try to prepare was something I deeply appreciate.
And here,
I want to thank everyone who wished me on my birthday,
maybe some of you don't take wishes seriously,
but I do,
I appreciate every word you used to wish me,
I appreciate every picture you attached with the wish,
I appreciate every single effort you have given to slightly enlighten my birthday.
I do.
I really, really do.
To sum up,
it wasn't a good one, but it wasn't a bad one either.
