23

I never celebrated my birthday away from home. This is the first time. There are some birthdays that I had that sucked. I remember my 9th birthday in 1993 where there was a f*cking typhoon. One of the hardest that hit the Philippines. It sucked so hard since I cannot leave my house since there were roofs flying all over the metro. But the worst of all is that there was no electricity in the whole of Metro Manila.

There are also some birthdays that I had that I wasn't really happy. I thought that this was one of them. I did not tell any of my friends here that it is my birthday. As a Filipino, we usually don't broadcast to the whole world that it is our day. No one does that much.

I went to Suzhou a few hours before the clock ticked 12. A few hours before that, I missed my train. It sucked. I was late. The good thing was 3 of my friends waited for me and then we took the last train from Shanghai to Suzhou. We got there an hour before 12. Usually I had parties on the 2nd of November waiting for the clock to sound and celebrate another year of existence. But this year it was different.

As the clock ticked 12, I got calls from very special people in my life that assured me that this day will be alright. They made me feel that this day was special for me. After that my friends here knew that it was my birthday and greeted me. I felt happy. It may sound like its a shallow feeling but I liked it.

As my day went on I discovered the beautiful sights of Suzhou. We went around, horseplayed a lot and enjoyed each other's company. We even watched Filipino and English TV. Our friends there had cable. Nice!!! We were like mountain people, never watched TV before.

After which, we had dinner. Then these bastards got me a cake. It is a small cake but it felt it was really big as it melted my heart. They sang and stuff. You know the drill...

We went on drinking after that and enjoyed the night. It was a hell of a day for me. I missed a lot of people but I sure was happy.