The above picture was taken by Benny.  In the picture are Lora, Cynthia, my niece Bethany, and I.  We were in a restaurant of my choice, near Bird Park.  Quite possibly the most authentic Dim Sum restaurant that we can afford, that my sister and I have located so far.  I asked if I could take little Bethany to see the birds in the park next door.  Her parents looked at each other as though it was one of the rather bizarre requests they have encountered.  Our deadlock was saved by the pouring rain after our sumptuous lunch.  Thank you Lora for picking up the bill.  It was a lovely birthday celebration.  O happy day.

I love my insurance agent.  I would recommend her to anyone in need of a coverage.  On Friday, she called me, “Tomorrow is your birthday and I wish you a happy birthday in advance!”.  I hesitated and said out loud, “Tomorrow is my birthday?”  She went silence hiding in embarrassment.  I broke my silence and screamed, “Tomorrow is my birthday!”.

The first thing that came to my mind when I thought of what I wanted for my birthday was to freeze time.  “What age you want to be at then?” asked Cynthia in the car.  Without thinking, I answered, “26”.  She asked why.  I had no idea except subconsciously, being 26 was the happiest time of my life (so far).  She asked again, “Why?”.  I did a mental scan on the major events that happened when I was 26.  That year, I fell in love.

30 minutes before the clock struck midnight, I have initiated an assault to my storeroom.  Something I have been wanting to do for more than a decade of inhabiting in this cosy apartment of ours.  Systematically, I torn out the pieces of junk covered in decade old dust and moved them by batches to the disposable area at my ground lobby.  The process took a lot lesser time than I thought, which makes me wonder why I have been putting this off for so long.  The next morning, my mother called.  “You remember my birthday!” I exclaimed.  In retrospect, what a dumb thing to say.  Of course she does.  It must have been a memorable day of pain and relief for her.  When I told her what I did last evening, she said, “Things that you haven’t used for two years you should throw them away.”  I love my mother and her easy-to-follow guidance.

Cynthia was speechless looking at her dream came true in the most unexpected day of the calendar.  The next morning, on my birthday, I made another assault to my common bedroom – the extended storeroom.  This should make my mother and mother-in-law happy too, as they do stay with us in that room occasionally.  If you could see the before and after images of my storeroom and common bedroom, you too would be shocked by the amount of space reclaimed.

What should I do with my 40 feet tall music CD tower if I am to stake them on top of one another now that I have digitalized them (to the best of my measurement)?  It is a tough decision, tougher than throwing away magazines in plastic wrap, sentimental items that serve no purpose, and items that are in at best partially working condition.  For now, I tug them alphabetically in cardboard boxes.  Since there is no point to display a subset of my CD collection in my living room, I have re-purposed my CD rack into a DVD rack, which involved a re-positioning of 21 beams across 140 holes in total on both sides of the stand.  24 hours into my impromptu spring cleaning, on my birthday, I was thoroughly exhausted, feeling the body ache here and there.  But it was a satisfying exercise, a precursor to our long overdue renovation.