It’s time to put one of the special events that happened last month into this blog!

My first month of 2009 has just passed.

And the passing of January 2009 is nothing ordinary.

It marks the incredible milestone of me stepping into the glorious age of 21, baby!

Now, how glorious, exactly, is 21 - it’s the age that you are, finally and completely, on your own.

No more age restrictions, no more consent forms, no more nothing!

More practically, no more thoughts of smuggling into clubs and casinos, no more – NOT – being able to do anything just because of your age!

You’ve complete broken out of the last of any age restrictions or supervisions – you can even get married without your parent’s consent! (Not that I condone it )

Now, of course, we all know that these age restrictions were there to protect you. And activities with an age restriction (well, except marriage and arguably, sex) are generally ‘unhealthy’ activities – smoking, drinking, gambling etc.

And at age 21 you’re expected to be mature enough to judge for yourself what is good and what is bad business.

So yes, you’re free to do anything you want at age 21, but if you do screw up, you also lose all the protection afforded to juveniles and face the consequences straight and hard. No chances, no mercy! Bad huh?

Why? Because you’re already a grown-up; no longer an innocent kid or a wild teenager. You’re an adult… A man.

So, moral of the story – try all the crimes you want before you come of legal consent age. That way at least you won’t go to jail!

No, just kidding!

So, back to myself – if 21 is such a great milestone age, and the next milestone age, 55 (the retirement age), is just so far away, I had expected to celebrate my birthday this year, like – very, VERY EXTRAVAGANTLY.

But alas! Check your desktop calendar and you’ll find that January 25th – my birthday, was on, of all days, Chinese New Year’s Eve this year!

What does that mean?

It means I didn’t get to celebrate my precious 21st birthday the way I wanted! Because no one was going to stay back that day! Everyone had to go back to their hometowns to have their reunion dinner! And that includes me, too!

Note: No, this isn’t a photo of my reunion dinner.

And typically, you don’t just leave the house anytime  soon ‘before’  or  ‘after’ the reunion dinner. You gotta stay back and sit in the house for “reunion’s” sake. So there went my long-awaited 21st birthday party, at least that was what I had thought.

Luckily, I can still write right now, that I still had a very, very memorable 21st birthday.

Still having a small number of charming, special friends (and one particularly) putting in a wonderful amount of effort, surprise after surprise, to prevent my 21st birthday from sliding into the list of my most terrible birthdays ever…

I am so, very wonderfully blessed…

…

… but one of the birthday cakes was definitely not!

It was terrifyingly destroyed by our special, barbaric eating method!

The beautiful ice-cream cake, at first:

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

Step 5:

There were no plates involved.

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Hey people, Happy super belated New Year 2009!

Haha, it’s been a whole month without any updates!

This new year – year 2009, however, is going to be different! Why? Because this year, my New Year’s Resolution #10:

I’m going to make absolutely sure that this blog is updated regularly – and this is no joke. If anything like this happens again (whole month no update) in 2009 – listen carefully – I am going to TAKE DOWN James-Chow.com, as a penalty to myself.

Meaning – I am going to destroy this website, along with the domain name, all the posts, all the photos, – EVERYTHING – if I fail to update for so long ever again!

Now that’s some motivation for me, since James-Chow.com really means a lot to me! Hehe…

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This new year has been great so far… But 2008 wasn’t bad either.

So it was really a happy moment to throw 2008 into the dusty storeroom and welcome glorious 2009 into our lives!

This is the countdown celebration that I attended at The Curve.

The fireworks were magnificent, and the crowd was as though Anwar and Najib were turning up for a one-on-one wrestling competition.

As midnight approached, it was almost impossible to even move through the monstrous crowd!

After the countdown, confetti, streamers and fake ’snow’ were everywhere, the next picture looks like it was snowing over there!

It seemed a crime to be clean without a serious mess on your hair and clothes, and I guess the ‘cleaner’ you are, the more you got sprayed on!

No one had any mercy on my hair:

I looked ridiculously like an old rabbit with fluffy grey hair… and with a very bad haircut. Anyways, that was how 2008 passed me by!

Well, I’m not gonna write too much into this post, since I’ll be updating regularly lah! Can relax a bit on the content…

Trust me. I’ll keep to my word, or else…

Nowadays it’s pretty hard to stay updated… this blog, I mean.

Right now, this very second – *tick* – that I am writing this entry, I am supposed to be on a one-day Ipoh trip with tourism club…

Yes, Ipoh is my beautiful hometown and where the irritatingly popular Old Town kopitiams came from… a trip to my own place, but I still signed up for it, because I knew it was going to be very different going with friends.

HOWEVER, I am now – instead – sitting lazily in front of my computer writing this entry because I am sick – got a head-splitting headache, fever and some very annoying sore throat…

… and it has been haunting me for like almost a week already… Huhu…

I hate missing the trip, I really do, but thanks to waking up only at 2PM this afternoon (instead of 4.30AM if I went for the trip), I’m feeling slightly better now.

Anyway, come to think of it – if I went for this Ipoh trip, this would be the 4th consecutive weekend that I’ve gone back to Ipoh!

It’s like – go back – come back – go back again – come back again – and again – and again… 4 TIMES – more than 1500 kilometers in journey! Simply double that distance and we can reach Taiwan by air!

The 1st trip back to Ipoh was made in the week straight after the Endau Rompin trip. I went back for the semester break and then returned after a few days for a very special Genting trip;

We stayed there for three nights because of the terrible afternoon fog that scared us from driving down after the second night – so we stayed for another.

By the way, check out the brand name of the bumper cars used in the Genting indoor theme park:

… as if reminding everyone to say:

Anyway, the following weekend, went back to Ipoh for a wedding dinner, at which Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Seri Ong Ka Chuan made an honorable speech, and then tendered his resignation from his ministerial post less than two weeks later.

Then last week, I went back to Ipoh again as an assistant in a children’s camp.

…. where kids were painfully tortured and laughed at.

NO LA! We were very good teachers… The other kids did it to them! And the ‘victims’ volunteered themselves…

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Before I end, let me announce that my laptop is – again – not working!

This is neither the first, nor the second, but the THIRD time I have to bring my laptop to friggin’ Times Square (so far away) to fix it…

… And that’s because local computer shops have checked it and don’t think it’s a small problem and asked me to bring back to the official service center - terrible huh?

What’s more, all three times it’s been the same problem… And although each time it seems to be fixed, it comes back again!

(For the record: I have an entire house of IT students staying with me and I am an Electronics major myself. I’m not being infected by some stupid virus or other software stuff, thank you.)

And to add insult to the injury – my laptop is just slightly over a year old! The warranty has only just expired!

Let this add me to Acer’s already stinking unsatisfied customers’ list.

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Sigh… It’s dinner time now, I think the other committees who have gone for the Ipoh trip are probably having their steamboat dinner now…

I gotta go for dinner too! Update soon!