Yes, today is my thirtieth birthday. I was a bit worried that I hadn't made it to the cusp of my third decade without really experiencing the marrow of life. Today, all that changed. I took myself off to a mountain town called Pyin U Lwin to visit the National Botanical Gardens of Myanmar. Very nice, very nice. Anyway, I walked through the walk-in aviary and admired the peacock chicks underfoot and the hornbills overhead. When I got to the signs explaining what birds were in this huge aviary, I was ecstatic to discover that I had been flapping around in the same cage as... wait for it... a GREATER ROCKET-TAILED DRONGO. It's all downhill from here.
Thanks to everyone for lovely birthday emails. Systems are a bit dicey this end so I won't be in full response mode until I reach the buzzing technopolis of Bangkok on the 19th. I leave Mandalay tomorrow for Bagan (ancient capital sacked by Kublai Khan...) having spent a really fantastic time here and made lots of friends. When I arrived in Myanmar, I wanted to leave immediately. I am now extremely keen to return. Will post more if possible...
Anyway
- trixie
- My birth certificate attests to my debut on a Saturday in the middle of May, 1977. You can thus deduce that I am a bullish Taurean, that I was born in the Chinese year of the Snake, that my Burmese animal is the Dragon. This means that I am wont to bellow, hiss, and breathe fire, to stampede, slither and fly. Because my birth certificate was stamped by a bureaucrat in service to Her Majesty’s Government, I am a citizen of the United Kingdom. Because both of my parents were practicing Australians, I am also a citizen of Australia. I have thus two passports both of which inexplicably contain photographs of some random grumpy refugee from an eighties hair band. This means that I am constitutionally duplicitous: I can change my mode from imperial to colonial at will; I can embody, at turns, Old World Charm and New World Pizzazz; I can personify the staid and stagnant as readily as the arriviste and anxious. I do not hold, nor have I ever held, a driver’s licence, a boat licence, a gun licence, a forklift ticket or a motorcycle licence. This means that I have never, ever had to moderate my alcohol consumption for fear that I might have to operate heavy or dangerous machinery.
2 comments:
Happy BIRDY! I come to the party a couple of days late, but bearing gateaux and streamers. Thirty sounds just fine. Love much, lexicon.
to go with your drongo: our lesser hairy footed dunnart now gracing the lounge room wall. happy birthday lovely lady, bises
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