Sunday, March 16, 2008

First birthday

Time flies. It seriously does. When I first arrived in Sydney, I was helping out at Petrina's wedding. Now, 5 years later, I helped out at her baby's birthday party. It's a big deal here, birthdays, I mean. A baby's first, a teenager's 16th, then the 18th because that's the legal drinking and clubbing age, then the 21st.

Birthdays are celebrated in style, here. Well, more so compared to in KL. I guess, there's nothing much else to celebrate other than the big ones (i.e. Christmas, Easter, Australia Day, New Year). At least in Malaysia, we have everything from the main races.

Birthdays are even bigger when you're the first child. You see, Brianna is the first child (and grandchild) of both families so naturally, her birthday was a big hoo-haa.

Sadly, I don't recall my own first birthday. I have many pictures documenting it but no mental recollection of it. Not even a tiny bit. The photos show that I turned one at my grandparents' house in Seri Kembangan. Dad was most probably the one who took the pictures as he was in none of them. Mum was wearing a pale peach coloured maternity dress (yup, mum gave birth to my li'l bro 2 days later). Granddad was there with my other cousins. In one picture, I was frowning at Cousin Pei Li because she took a cherry away from the cake!

However, I do remember my brother's first birthday, though. We celebrated it at home, in our first house in Klang. We had a chocolate sponge cake with Mickey Mouse on top. It had chocolate wafer sticks around the sides. Mum boiled two red eggs (one for each of us). Back then, bro was still a chubby, fair and adorable little boy with big, captivating eyes - total opposite of what he looks like now. Mum was desperately trying to take good shots of both of us, to no avail. Why? Because dear li'l baby bro decided to GRAB the chocolate wafer sticks from the cake using his hands! I remember how I was upset with him... funny, the things you tend to remember.

Oops, sidetracked.. haha.. well, Brianna's birthday was held at Nurragingy Reserve and I doubt she knew what the commotion was about.




She was happy to enjoy the attention and the food. I was glad to have been part of it.

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