After 25

Last Sunday, we gathered together in celebration of the 1st quarter of Fookie’s life. That occassion was interesting because 1) we Taiwanese travelled all around and hard to find a time to reunion after the fall break, 2) Fookie’s prepared so many food for us that it’s like a smaller scale of Moon fest. So she invited many friends of her, and our Turkish friend Ebru and Ata, and the kitchen partners came together to her. I asked Pascal and Deniz came for food, and Jurji, Nora, Tereza and Dan came directly after from Alps.

We served some Taiwanese foods and Fookie herself prepared quite a lot. We had braised potato with pork, scallion chicken, steamed eggs and rice. Jurji bought a package of wine here, and we bought a dark forest cake for Fookie.

One spot in the evening was the Happy Birthday song nonstop in different languages. There were people from at least 5 different nationalities so we sang the song for 5 times. Happy Birthday, Joyeux Anniversaire(french), Mutlu yıllar sana(turkish), Zum Geburtstag viel Glück(german) and 祝你生日快樂(madarin).

When a woman grow to 25, it will be something different than before. It’s not said that she will be older but mature. People from Asia usually stay with the parents or family even if we went to the universities. The consequence is that we are more or less childish in comaprison with Europeans in some ways. Besides, thanks to our ancestor, our faces looked much younger than western people. So often times we would be consider underaged. (e.g In Taiwan, I have an “old face”, but standing next to Mathias(same age), I look like a teenager.) I call that “Asian advantage.”

People here won’t usually talk about age. Since they don’t have the tradition to respect elderly, you have to prove yourself is the one people should pay respect to. So age is not a problem in most occassion(except models. LOL) Even if you were 40 and your job is a professor but you talk like shit, nobody’s willing to listen to you.