101010
I turned 22 last Sunday.
My birthday celebrations really began on Saturday when my I got the bouquet of flowers that my parents sent for me. It was pretty big and I wasn't expecting it at all so it was a beautiful surprise.
Abhishek rang me about a half hour into my birthday, when I was still up around midnight, diligently reading about some vague neurophysiology. In the morning I spoke to almost my entire family on the phone, including the folks in India - it took a while!
Early (TOO early) on the cold, cold morning of my birthday, a couple of my housemates and I went to a car boot sale across the river in Gateshead. We were mainly looking for bicycles for ourselves, to add to the growing fleet of bikes in our living room. After looking around a bit, we finally found one that was in a reasonable condition and going for only £10. We hmmed and hawed over it for a bit and then decided that I'd stay with the bike while the other two went to look for other (better) bikes. So as I stayed with the bike, pretending to check it over several times over when the owner called out, "That one's sold!" I looked up and saw two guys (probably father and son) grinning at me triumphantly, the proud owners of this scrap bike.
Anyway I left it there and found my housemates. We found another bike, this one going for £15, but after one of us mildly haggled with the mean-looking owner, he agreed to £10. I checked it over once and basically pounced on it. A bike for a tenner! BARGAIN! I just need to get a lock for it and perhaps a helmet and then I'm all set to ride it to the moon and back.
As lunchtime approached and I had spent an eternity checking my birthday wishes on Facebook, I decided I should go to the gym. But my friends came over before I could leave. And they had brought cake. They'd melted the chocolate icing and it was in a puddle on the plate. Soon after cutting the cake and thanking them, my face got painted with the chocolate. It felt oddly nice. My skin tightened a bit, which I guess I need at my age!
Later in the evening, I hurriedly got dressed, spraying on a bit too much eau de toilette in the process, and rushed off to Nando's to book a table for 30 people. I got there just in time, cakes in hand, and the waiter found me a seating area for 30 people - which was around the number of people I was expecting to turn up. People trickled through, one by one. One of my housemates paid for my meal.. so sweet! There was a good mix of people there and the food was pretty good too. There was loads of cake left over to so I tried to give some away to strangers, with some success.
And because the date on my birthday was 10/10/10 and apparently 101010 in binary = 42, I decided to go kabbalistic and took what remained of the party to Bar 42. We had drinks there and then nearly got attacked by a drugged-up guy who was probably hallucinating. Obviously, we scrammed from there.
This week's been pretty busy in terms of work - lots of reading to do and I've managed to gather some more. I really have to push myself to not read the Wikipedia articles on the topics I'm supposed to look up even though the Wikipedia articles are so much simpler and concise albeit with some small flaws :) Plus it's really frustrating when a lecturer doesn't know what they're on about and when you try to look for scientific journal articles to get supposedly "the best information" on the subject, you find that the university doesn't subcribe to that particular journal. ARGH!
My birthday celebrations really began on Saturday when my I got the bouquet of flowers that my parents sent for me. It was pretty big and I wasn't expecting it at all so it was a beautiful surprise.
Abhishek rang me about a half hour into my birthday, when I was still up around midnight, diligently reading about some vague neurophysiology. In the morning I spoke to almost my entire family on the phone, including the folks in India - it took a while!
Early (TOO early) on the cold, cold morning of my birthday, a couple of my housemates and I went to a car boot sale across the river in Gateshead. We were mainly looking for bicycles for ourselves, to add to the growing fleet of bikes in our living room. After looking around a bit, we finally found one that was in a reasonable condition and going for only £10. We hmmed and hawed over it for a bit and then decided that I'd stay with the bike while the other two went to look for other (better) bikes. So as I stayed with the bike, pretending to check it over several times over when the owner called out, "That one's sold!" I looked up and saw two guys (probably father and son) grinning at me triumphantly, the proud owners of this scrap bike.
Anyway I left it there and found my housemates. We found another bike, this one going for £15, but after one of us mildly haggled with the mean-looking owner, he agreed to £10. I checked it over once and basically pounced on it. A bike for a tenner! BARGAIN! I just need to get a lock for it and perhaps a helmet and then I'm all set to ride it to the moon and back.
As lunchtime approached and I had spent an eternity checking my birthday wishes on Facebook, I decided I should go to the gym. But my friends came over before I could leave. And they had brought cake. They'd melted the chocolate icing and it was in a puddle on the plate. Soon after cutting the cake and thanking them, my face got painted with the chocolate. It felt oddly nice. My skin tightened a bit, which I guess I need at my age!
Later in the evening, I hurriedly got dressed, spraying on a bit too much eau de toilette in the process, and rushed off to Nando's to book a table for 30 people. I got there just in time, cakes in hand, and the waiter found me a seating area for 30 people - which was around the number of people I was expecting to turn up. People trickled through, one by one. One of my housemates paid for my meal.. so sweet! There was a good mix of people there and the food was pretty good too. There was loads of cake left over to so I tried to give some away to strangers, with some success.
And because the date on my birthday was 10/10/10 and apparently 101010 in binary = 42, I decided to go kabbalistic and took what remained of the party to Bar 42. We had drinks there and then nearly got attacked by a drugged-up guy who was probably hallucinating. Obviously, we scrammed from there.
This week's been pretty busy in terms of work - lots of reading to do and I've managed to gather some more. I really have to push myself to not read the Wikipedia articles on the topics I'm supposed to look up even though the Wikipedia articles are so much simpler and concise albeit with some small flaws :) Plus it's really frustrating when a lecturer doesn't know what they're on about and when you try to look for scientific journal articles to get supposedly "the best information" on the subject, you find that the university doesn't subcribe to that particular journal. ARGH!