Happy August, everyone! The sun is out, the birds are trying to attract each other in their own untelevised version of “The Lorikeet Wants a Mate”, and Spring is in the air when it should really be hailing! Ahh. But best of all, my birthday is just around the corner — that is, if weekends were square and had corners.

Unfortunately, though, three things yet stand in the way of my having a truly happy birthday:

1. This year my birthday falls on a Monday. And if there is one truth universally acknowledged, it’s that Monday is the least celebratory day of the week. If there’s ever a Judgement Day, you know it’ll be on a Monday.
2. I’ve now entered the stage of my life where little armies of presents and inanely singing relatives cannot mask the terrifying fact that I am 365-6 days OLDER than I was 365-6 days ago. I’m practically shrivelling up already!
3. Having spent the last six months in a relatively constant state of recline, I find it deeply ironic in an unpleasant way that I must actually work on my birthday this year. You see, once again I was weak-boundaried enough to agree to roll myself out like some kind of Mandarin-speaking trained simian at a Chinese Consulate-organised educational event. This time I’m regaling the guests and distinguished fogeys with my rendition of Jasmine Flower (茉莉花), a song which definitely belongs to the “cat yowling” school of Chinese folk song. If it were my choice (which I quickly found out it wasn’t), I would be singing an upbeat pop song by one of Taiwan’s premier boybands, but apparently that wasn’t the go and now I’m stuck belting out the relative merits of some random flower I wouldn’t recognise from a pokéball (my hortiulture expertise being up there with my knowledge of world geography). Not that I’m particularly bitter.

Oh, well. Wish me luck. See you on the other side of 18.