千九百九十：oh crap i'm 30

bb at 8 weeks making faces at me

Well.. the day has arrived sooner than expected. First birthday present is from a friend received last week, although I haven't known her for long, she remembered my birthday which very much surprised me (& I'm quite touched). She has been looking out for me quite often in the past year which I'm very very thankful for. 2nd present was not so great though, a bunch of bugs. As in system bugs. Signoff for a big project is due tomorrow, & here I am at 3.32am trying to regress the bugs. Why am I doing this at this hour, you might ask, well... blame the dumbo engineers who like to leave things to the last minute. Can't they patch stuff 2 days ago? grrr... Hopefully I won't have to work until the same hours tomorrow night. This year is extra special because my sister is back from London in Singapore; we haven't had a chance to all gather at home since... 2009? & that was because of my wedding. now we have one more little lady in the house, my dad must be feeling the heat / noise from all the female hormones around him. It's been fun having someone at home in the afternoon to play kinect with & also to just help with the baby or to correct my knitting (which turns out has been wrong the whole time ...) The house will be so quiet next week (T.T)

千九百八十九：Almost 30

just love this innocent look at age 6 weeks

It's nearly 2 months of looking after a baby , & less than a month to my 30th birthday.

After such a long time of being young (usually I'm always the youngest at my workplace somehow, at the age of 20++) suddenly 30 sounds very old. No wonder Rachel in Friends refused to come out of her room on her birthday. I'm trying not to be bothered about it, but it's hard. The only consolation is that I've achieved most of what I wanted to before 30.

Before 30 (in no particular order)

• Completed a marathon
• Got married / had a baby 
• Still earning my own keep
• Living overseas
• Got my degree somehow
• Maintained zero debts 
• Managed to build up & hold on to some sort of investment portfolio which cannot feed me as passive income but can sell if in a pinch.
• Travelled to most of the cities I've always wanted to go (eg New York, Paris, London, Rome etc) 
• Saw Kimura Takuya in real life no less than 2m away at a SMAP concert when his crane like apparatus stopped right in front of me

Unfilfilled aspirations 

• I still can't speak French fluently
• I haven't properly travelled to other parts of France
• I want to watch a baseball match with Ichiro playing!
• Complete a marathon within 5 hours. 
• Start my own business somehow. still thinking of how to do it & what kind of business it should be. 
• Own my own home - this should be fulfilled next year! 
• Be able to bake all sorts of goodies and make all sorts of desserts
• Able to sew/knit make stuff really well

hmm.. I guess in the nearest sense, what I want to be able to do in the coming year is just be able to cope with working and looking after the baby at the same time (& I do have that competitive streak that I want my bb to be able to start walking etc really fast!) It's been a very challenging time the past 1.5 months, especially when I lack sleep and also learning to not let the baby restrict my social life and how to cope with work/baby at the same time. Even when I feel very very tired, it's just not possible to be angry with the bb (because i choose to have the bb; the bb didn't choose me) and when she gives the wide-eye pouty look, your heart just melts and smiles with her. I'm pretty thankful she only cries when she is hungry or wants to be carried (so far) but hopefully our communication will only improve with time :)