Blank Doll blows the candle.

Whew, woke up at 11am today.

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO CAME YESTERDAY AND/OR WISHED ME HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

Not that I'm pleased to be one year older and that my boss msged me on my birthday with work to do. Sigh.

This is sort of like a new year for me and I'm not too sure what I should be like on my 19th year. Maybe I'll be kinder as I mature though I doubt so.

Every birthday, I gather my secondary school friends for dinner at my place and this year was no different. There's something to be said about having a group of friends you can be comfortable with, a particular bunch that no amount of time will render the old bonds obsolete. Through the dismal travails of growing up in a neighbourhood school, I am glad to have found friends like them. As I blew the candles on my cake (a giant matcha from canele, it's the equivalent of presenting ten gs of premium coke and a silver tiffany straw to a druggie), it dawned on me that this could be the second last birthday I'll ever celebrate with them before I fly off to Paris. The tradition began when I was 14 and next year when I am 20, I think I shall line up all my birthday pictures with them together so that we can all see how we've all grown.

It is the rituals of life by which we mark the passing of time. We have faced the death of a friend together, we have faced school and exams together and now we commiserate over the evils of university and national service. I hope to one day be able to share the travails of work with them even if a lot of the cost of my work will have to be left unspoken.

I am after all, a clean cut boy with a clean cut face.

C'est tout.