Happy Birthday to me..

Yesterday was, once again, my birthday.. and since it has been Ages since I last celebrated with my family, there was a lot of celebration in store.. thank you so much for the gifts, the cards, the sms messages, the phone calls and al the greetings through email and the online messengers... abah was still in Australia, and he'll only be back this Saturday.. and Husna won't be back from UTP until tomorrow, so there's more gifts in store.. hooray..

I can't wait til work starts, but there's still about a month before that happens.. I'm starting to feel the pang of being officially labelled unemployed for the first time in my whole life, the future is an open-ended book, and I'm here just planning and writing th eplot of the next chapter.. It's been almost a month since I've returned home in Malaysia. I've actually left Minnesota over a month a go but I spent a week in London with Nini, Mudin, Monina, Pakak, Azam, Aliff and most importantly, Norman. The girls stayed at Monina's brother's place, stategically located at Bayswater, which is in Central London.. while the boys stayed with Azam and Aliff.. we went to Oxford and Bath with Abg Lan, Kak Ija and their two darling daughters, Raihan(Ann) and Amy.. it was a lot of fun. we spent most of the days in London visiting the famous sites such as the Buckingham palace, the London Eye, Madame Touscand's Wax Museum, the Tower Bridge and also spent some time shopping (mostly window shopping) in Oxford Street and a day at Harrod's. The Boxing Day Sale was on and so there was a lot of people in the street.. Dya joined me later in London on the day before New Year, Norman and I went to pick her up at Gatwick Airport.. that night we all ate together and later went out to see the fireworks of the New Year celebration.

A few days later, Mon returned back to Malaysia while everyone (except Aliff and Abg Lan's family) went to Dublin, which is Norman's place.. we met more of our Beserian friends here, Nini and I stayed at Harlihati and Farah Hayana's place while the boys stayed at Norman's place.. except for Mudin, who stayed at his sister's place.. Unexpectedly, I also met the other ACCA girls who used to stay at the same block with me while I was in PPP.. We, Norman and I, bumped into them when they all went out to meet Azam, who was also joined by Pakak, Ati and Yana.. so we went to have tea together.. the next day we all went to Howth, a small fisherman's village by the sea.. it was really cold but we had a picnic by the rocks nonetheless..

On the 8th of January, Pakak left to go back to Bristol, while Nini, Mudin and I returned back to London.. I wish I could've stayed a little bit longer but our plane leaves for KUL the next morning from Heathrow.. While waiting for the bus that would take us to the Dublin Airport, I met Yazley, our senior, who I met on my first day in London.. Now that I think about it, it seems quite ironic that we met on the first and the last day that I was in that continent for this trip.. that last bus ride to the airport seems so sad to me, I feel like that some of the happiest moments I've felt in a long time was while I was there in Dublin, and I don't really want to part from all that just yet..

But it's time to move on.. as we landed in KLIA, I realized that no longer a student, it's time to take my first step into the real world..