Quotes from birthday mails

...your cunningness in moving to china means your birthday is actually 28 hours long (I think). And that means I feel kinda ripped off coz not only was mine normal length but all I got was this lousy T-shirt.... Wouldn't that be strange? If we printed T-shirts that said all of ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ that? I think they'd fly off the shelves. Not literally fly, of course, we're not in Finland! Not anymore!

～No, indeed we are not. But who could forget those fajitas.

There's not a lot of interesting stuff you can write about birthdays anymore. You already got your presents and I'm stumped if I have any idea of how to get any more to you nowadays. Seems you've removed yourself from the known face of the postal-planet as far as I'm concerned. At least that was my excuse for not getting up and wandering around figuring out what to get you.

～You're off the hook. I don't think that excuse would get you out of paying a speeding ticket though, so you'll have to show a little cleavage if you ever get stopped.

Your father took off for a month overseas when you were 6 months old, this coincided with the extension finished and your new bedroom next door to ours ready for you. And that was the start of your life, 23 years later with 2 brothers and 1 sister, a few cats, mice, rats, fish, girlfriends and of course the old parents, you are being fashioned into the man you are now. These years for you are supposed to be good years though I know sometimes you do things that are maybe not so much fun on the way to something that should be great. At least you have family and friends who love you even though we cannot be with you on this day.

～Father took off eh? That's probably why I'm such a mummy's boy. That, and who wouldn't be, with a mum like you?

Vanilla Bear...
Today is the first day of another 365 day journey around the sun. Hope you enjoy the ride =)
I wish you health, wealth and happiness ! (but in the order of: health, happiness, wealth). It just doesn't sound as good when you say it though =)
Have a wicked awesome day. Miss ya loads !

～Miss you too Mocha Bear. Glad to hear you think the earth revolving around the sun revolves around my birthday. You and me both☆

Tim今日たんじょーびじゃん♪おめでと～ (。・ｘ・)ゝ
23だったよね♪　良い年になりますよーに！！

～ありがとうちゃん～23歳やけど、絶対まだおっさんじゃないよ！「親父ギャグ」大好きけどね☆

Happy birthday, sweetness, I hope you have an excellent day. You're old like us now! Get your workmates to shout you booze.

～Ta lady - day was OK, but I'm hoping for a better average over the course of the year ;) PS. I'm not old like you, I'm young like me. Suspiciously, exactly like me. Hmmm.

Today is the day you become the grand age of twenty-three (and it's also the national holiday of Sweden), with grand being the first part of grandparent. Or grandfather. Or grandmother. I remember when grandmother was a huge word in spelling tests - that and wheelbarrow. But you're not a wheelbarrow. Nor a grand-anything, unless you mean a grand person! See, I always find a way to flatter someone.

～Your mail was my favourite. If your mail was a friend, it would be the kind that took me out for a picnic and then opened the basket to find lemurs inside, and then we would all take polaroids and stick them on bus windows. It would be the best day ever!


～You always go to great lengths for people's birthdays, but I think here you outdid yourself. I haven't had a car cake since my 8th birthday! Score!

Thanks guys, I really appreciate yous ;) And to everyone else who got in touch with me. A waitress in our hotel was really excited about being on time to say Happy Birthday to me today, and I felt a bit bad about having to tell her that she'd mistaken the other 6 for a 9...still nice though. I think I'll buy her peroxide for her birthday.

I23

So, Wednesday was my 23rd birthday. But you could have fooled me. There were a few birthday-esque things about it, but as a rule I'd probably put it down as my loneliest birthday so far. Not that lots of people who know me didn't try really hard to make it special, which I was really grateful for.

My day started at 3.45, when I woke up and called Mum to mumble semi-conscious thanks for bringing me into the world and not bringe-drinking while pregnant so as I could grow up to have this Spartan physique and eloquent vocabulary. I don't think I used as many words or overexaggerations as that, but oh well - artistic license.

Back to bed, only to wake up at 6.40 to go pick up members of Nintendo. Amid a busy day touring one of our supplier's factories, we were invited out to lunch by the factory's VP. 5-Star restaurant on your birthday? Yes please. Having said that, noone knew (or else didn't remember). What made this all the more laughable is that when our manager mentioned it was his birthday on Sunday, everyone gave him hearty congratulations. Fair enough, and I wasn't about to say anything out of the blue. But then, someone happened to say to me "you're 22 right Tim?". Oh HO I'm not thank you very much, was my triumphant reply; it's my birthday today, I'll have you know I'm 23 (of course I didn't say it like a pompous English ass, rather I said it in Japanese, but it makes for better reading if I flower up the dialogue, don't you think?)
What kind of response would you expect? "Oh, Happy Birthday" might be standard. "Really?" would be fair enough. But what did I get, from almost all members at the table? "You're lying." Why would I lie about being 23? I don't necessarily WANT to be older (maybe it would get me more respect at the company, but I'm not that desparate). Even though I continued to claim my honest, noone believed me. I cracked out my driver's license, but they were more interested in my 15-year-old picture than in the evidence. What's with that? I mean, I make jokes, but since when am I not to be trusted on my own birthdate?

NB: When we got in the car to leave, I was sitting next to a manager from Nintendo, who asked me again how old I was, and when I told him it really happened to be my birthday, he offered me congratulations. Good on him.

Complaining about the company aside, it was a pretty decent birthday lunch (and gratis too), including: Peanuts & cashews, sweet&sour pork, fish, tofu, goose (I was surprised too) and of course, combination fried rice. Or the 5-star equivalent. All that was missing was wine, but we had coke and I can't say I was disappointed. Just wondering where the chippies were (and why we didn't play pass-the-parcel).

Got home pretty late, to find the hotel had left me a gift in my room: an extravagantly decorated cake. If only it wasn't as tasteless as it was garnished. Still, it's the thought (and the customer goodwill) that counts. Check out how many forks they gave me to eat it with! 10 in total. They make the gross assumption that I actually KNOW 10 people here. And no, Takeya staff don't count. They wouldn't eat cake with me if I paid them.

Mio sent me a present with an awesome watch, complete with a button the function of which is just to change the style in which the seconds count on it. She also gave me my very first "voice message card", which I guess is only a few steps removed from a singing telegram. Honest, awesome idea - you can record a short message built into the card body, which the lucky so&so who gets it can play back to their heart's content. Wish I'd designed that. It's the kind of thing I've had dreams about.

Also, for some odd reason, the housekeeping staff left me the daily newspaper for the 6th of June. I guess some people like to save the front page of the newspaper on their birthday. But usually they probably like to save a newspaper that is published in a language they can actually read. Even if my Mandarin was top notch, to be honest this article looks more boring than watching Prince Charles sleep. Besides - where's my picture? Under the headline "Kiwi boy enters country, raises national height average by over a foot".

All in all it was a pretty average birthday - the lowlight was eating my first birthday dinner alone (I passed up eating with my colleagues as we would have been out all night, and not in the "man, we were out all night, it was off the hook" kind of way.
But thanks heaps to everyone who mailed me, you rock my cyber-world. If you're a little patient, I'll give you your 15 mins... but for now that's all from me.

Happy My-Birth-Week!

Happy Birthday to Me

I'll post more on my rather uneventful but still extremely postable day later. For now, I'm officially 23. A PRIME NUMBER. I don't like prime numbers much (except for the single digit ones). Hopefully my year is not reflected in my numerical taste.

Toodles!

Grandpa - I mean Tim

Thoughts from work

Were you looking all over for me?

Things I've pondered while killing time at work in a sweltering factory office in China:

- What are all the workers in the factories thinking when they stare me like that? They ALL do. And when I smile or nod, most of them just keep staring. Freaks me out.

- Do the weird bugs that come out of the woodwork after sunset in droves here have malaria? How about senses of humour?

- Delayed orgasm is kung-fu. I could explain the train of thought that led me to this, but I think it's more fun if I don't☆

- Do planets in deep space smell like wet sawdust if they're uninhabited, and oil if they are, like in my dreams?

- Are fake boobs vulcanised? That would make a fun ice-breaker at parties. Or a party game: "Vulcanise The Boob (On The Donkey)".

- What would AnPanMan be if he forgot his underwear? NoPanMan? You need a background in Japanese humour to fully appreciate how cheesy that is.

- Why trilogies? For that matter, why prequels?

- Do dogs in China know they are going to be eaten, any more than sheep in New Zealand do? That may have been in bad taste (I don't know, I've never tasted dog)

- How many people around the world have made a complete fool out of themselves in the last 5 minutes?

- I hope Michael J. Fox is doing OK.

- The cheeky Hong Kong sales rep from our factory supplier looks like a beaver. And his colleagues look like a cat and a bear Now that I can see that, I can't "un-see" it. Getting kinda scared that animals are talking to me.

Last but not least, I heard THIS on the radio here today. Booya.
This one is a little more odd... "Sekai ichi no, Hiiro!"