Ninety Percent of the Way to Thirty

February 16th was my 27th birthday so the family got together for a small celebration.

The chocolate mousse cake that was completely devoured within two minutes. Because the whole family was busy with preparations and other stuff, I went to town and bought the cake myself. Glad I picked this one because usually at the end of the birthday celebration we ended up with a big chunk of uneaten cake, but this time my cake was the first one to be gone from the food table. I have chosen wisely...

The birthday feast was a simple lineup: chocolate mousse cake, mashed potato with mushroom gravy, salad with hard-boiled eggs, tomato and sliced cheese, turmeric fried chicken, and sliced oranges (Happy Chinese New Year of the Tiger, btw!)

Cutting the cake. As always, Abu my brother refuses to smile in the picture. He does this deliberately sometimes. The frown doesn't necessarily mean he's upset, he just wants to make a face in the picture.

This is my excuse for being overweight =). Whenever I'm home, there's such an abundance of wonderfully cooked meals that I find it hard to restrain myself from finishing up leftovers. My family feeds me well =)

Some of the presents. My sisters like to prepare and wrap each present themselves. Plus they always make (and not buy) the birthday card so it has a personal touch that you can never get from a card purchased from the store.

They spelled 'successful' wrong. My sister said it was deliberate. Yeah right =D

The symbolic t-shirt. The absent present (oxymoron!) was represented by the mock t-shirt my sister made. The actual t-shirt was left in our apartment in Seri Kembangan.

Mya gave me a personalized t-shirt with my family nickname on it spelt in Korean. Besan (or Abesan) is a portmanteau of the Kelantanese word 'Abe' (means big brother) and the last part of my name, 'San' (from 'Ihsan').

Milah and Shaz gave me a pair of Crocs. Each half of the pair was individually wrapped in two different presents, which meant that they each gave me half a pair =D. I guess in some ways, it meant that I have to use  both their gifts equally and am not able to prefer one over the other... maybe. I thought that was quite amusing =)

Another personalized birthday card made by my sisters, with a two-layer birthday cake and a pair of candles shaped like the number '27'.

There are presents yet to be received, and those are the ones I am quite excited about!

I am so grateful to my beloved family for the wonderful celebration this year. I have to say this is one of the best that I've had in a long time =)

Thanks for all the presents and the well-wishes. I am ninety percent of the way to being thirty. The past three-cubed years have been a journey, and I'm glad I got to share those years with my family and friends, and you guys, my blogreaders.

Thank you for those who've been there for me, both in body and in spirit. Those that I haven't seen for quite a while, do know that I really miss you and would love to have you around. I've had nothing but wonderful times with everyone and I hope we get to make more wonderful memories in the coming years.

Here's to being three to three-oh.

Cheers!

From Mashable: Visualizing 6 Years of Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC]

From the article at Mashable:

Conference, Journal, Wedding, Photography, Repairs, Basketball, Life.

Just listing what I'm currently having and will be having in the next few days...

Work Related To-Dos
Finish writing up the first draft of the paper for FEOFS 2010 conference (deadline tonight)
Prepare for pre-viva presentation (deadline Friday 12 January, 3pm postponed to March)
Search for local experts on genetic algorithm (deadline end of February)
Prepare a journal manuscript for a high-impact applied mathematics journal (deadline end of February)
Prepare a preliminary draft of Master's thesis (deadline end of February)
Perform more analysis on fatigue data recently acquired (by end of February)
Prepare slides for the paper to be presented at the conference in Cambridge, UK (by this weekend)

Other To-Dos
Attend wedding of Baizurah and Solehuddin (Saturday 13 February)
Photography assignment with Fahmi and Syazwani (Sunday 14 February)
Pay electricity bill at TNB Subang Jaya (Thursday or next week)
Deliver Wacom Intuos3 to Mailal (Friday night 12 February)

Have-Dones
Air-conditioner repair, power steering and engine maintenance for the Waja (cost: RM1600)
Replace burnt out lightbulbs in the Waja (cost: RM40)
Integrate a population diversity analysis function into the GA clustering method (cost: a headache)
Prepare slides for GUP research progress report

Life's hectic, but I guess it's less mundane that way. Still, I need more spice in my life, in my opinion. Maybe a return to playing basketball? It's been quite a while since I last went shooting hoops. I miss it terribly sometimes.