Dumplings & Birthdays

Perhaps that annual event that everyone waits for, their birthday! The presents come in, everyone wishes you happy birthday and truly it is an event filled with narcissism. Well not this year, well it's not even about my birthday, so people like SG don't go around saying that I'm so 寸.

Anyway, I didn't really plan out my day. It was one of those weekends where there was a family gathering with my maternal aunts, uncles, grandmother, great aunt + extended family I don't know how to translate into English. For the three years I've been here, there have been plenty of gatherings, and this one didn't really shout out to me as special. I went anyway. Set out at 10 am, to go hunting for this cake shop in Tin Hau that my mother forgot the address to, we went block to block for about 45 minutes and all I could think about is why I chose not to eat breakfast! Walking through the metal gate of my grandmother's flat it was food haven. Extended family all gathered around the table to make yummy home made dumplings.

WOOO mine ( :

How awesome does this look? 

Something we've always done randomly, just gather make our own and then cook em and eat em. Then savor the juices and become stuffed like teddy bears.

Dinner as usual was lavished with all sorts of food, that I don't have the patience to go through and discuss, but the birthday cakes rolled out. It's my great aunt's birthday, one of those joyful moments that we share as an entire extended family. It really goes to show how the hard ships come by and go especially this year. Since her last birthday everything imaginable could happen - shattered hip, going under twice, medications, hospitals, doctors.

Age is not what defines us - the mind behind the body is what does. She may be going on to hit a century + a decade we must take the time to celebrate and appreciate the things we do have now.

Cousins + G. Aunt + Grandmother