On relationships,

I am constantly led to reconsider my assumptions about people I think I know: equally let down as I am surprised. I've realized that you can't box people into categories, seems obvious but it's funny how I had to learn it. People you think are good friends will not always have your back, and people you feel have always let you down might come through when you need it most.
These moments will seem like game-changers but at the end of the day, it's ordinary. People are people. There is as much likelihood of making mistakes and taking others for granted as there is of rising to challenges and making amends. So I'm learning to manage my expectations of people so that I can say that it's okay- that there can be good or bad outcomes, and I will accept them both. If I want to give to people at all, there are no guarantees and there shouldn't have to be.

Know this from the offset. Realize this is what giving is all about.
Fight the intuition to guard and protect, and keep giving anyway, knowing that this means the very real possibility of hurt. Be grateful when people choose not to take liberties with that.
But above all to understand that people have the capacity to do either.

Watched Before Sunrise and Before Sunset last night,
Definitely among the best movies I've seen, especially the second one.
It didn't even feel like they were acting, kind of like you were let in or privy to a special moment, the beginning of a relationship, watching as two people got to know each other.

Made the mistake of starting on Before Sunrise at midnight, and obviously I couldn't not watch the next one after. I just wanted to know what happened.

Now I'm impatient for Before Midnight to come out.

Brandon Stanton, responsible for "Humans of New York"

I remember when Zihan was teaching me to torrent, he told me not to close the programme after my movie finished torrenting because it lets other people seed off my connection.
Sometimes the little things tell you a lot about a person.

"I'm frustrated. She's not getting any better."
"Make her better? Take care of your friend."

And how when things get complicated, the first things that go are the simple and basic truths that are often overlooked and easy to forget. It's easy to justify things and make excuses, but it's definitely much harder to acknowledge that the basic principles are still important.
If you're in a position to help someone, even if they don't seem to deserve it or you don't have the time or you don't really want to, maybe you just should anyway.

This is how I know I've got something special here- Zihan keeps me grounded and makes me better.
And I mean this in all sincerity- kudos to couples who know how to laugh, support each other and make each other stronger, are patient with each other, or feel comfortable enough to be themselves without any pretenses, I've seen for myself in relationships in my families how hard that is to do- but having someone who makes you better is something else entirely.

I think.. I've strayed from God but I'm coming back to Him now.
As much as I've tried in the past few months, and people have tried most of their lives, to live on good intentions alone, they are not enough.
With human love, there is always the inclination to think about justice. (on a side note, I've completed my MIT online course on global poverty and am moving on to the Harvard course on justice which is why I'm thinking about this to begin with).
Good intentions will make you give your time and effort to something you don't really have to give your time and effort to. But on our own strength and within our own minds, the question of whether someone deserves it still remains.
So on good intentions alone we can give our time to volunteer or help the less fortunate, which is not something everyone would do, but God's love takes us into the realm of loving those who don't deserve it? Loving your enemies and those who despise you. Or even to a lesser extent, loving those who make it hard to love them, refuse your love, or will never return it.
And it's the kind of calling that no other belief in life will require us to pursue.
I think I'm learning that  although I can get by without God, and perhaps be a good person, I would be fooling myself into thinking that I can do everything without Him.
There are some incredible things He and His love can empower me and will me to doing that I would otherwise not do.

I think the love God has shown me reminds me that none of that is important, but we are placed in specific places in people's lives to just love them. And be there for them when they need, no questions asked, no reciprocation necessary.

Been thinking about unconditional love, and how it works and why it works.
The word unconditional has its own connotations that sometimes cloud the real principle behind the type of love it endorses. To me, it's not so much about the idea of loving someone exactly as they are, or rather that is part of but not completely all there is to it.
It's the that you love someone enough to see them through the changes they have to undergo.
God loves us unconditionally while we were sinners, but also he loves us enough to want us to be better. That's real love, it's more than unconditional love- a love that's worth making an example of.
Helping someone to become better, but accepting them while they're working towards it.

So I guess I will just have to try and help my friend even though I don't need to do it, don't really want to do it, and she doesn't really want me to either. Because she needs it.
It's really opening my eyes to the way God loves us, and how much that actually means.
Seeing how God seeps into all of my relationships- good and bad, so relevant.

Spoke to Nat tonight, I feel like we've given each other so much that now when we talk, there's no need for clarifications or a setting of context. Our friendship and overlapped lives are context enough, and whenever we talk we can just go deeper into things on our minds. It's a beautiful friendship, really. I guess I can only wish everyone had a friend like her in their lives.

Haven't written in ages, but I'm also glad I let go of the controlling impulse to record everything in my life- passed Ethel my camera in December for her graduation and haven't had one since, and it really makes a difference to the way you spend your time. At gigs now I listen more, when I'm with my friends I enjoy it completely, I take in moments and commit them to memory,

Easter holidays were amazing-
Went to India with YNG for 4 days, spent days in the library with Amadea, nights having dinners with Zihan, meeting Naomii every single day even after we'd spent the entire time in India together, walking over to Nat's and staying til late, family dinners at the 3 restaurants we always go to, Singapore will always be home to me.

The last weekend before I left will stay in my heart for a long time- Liz flew back from Melbourne to surprise me for my 21st, along with my closest friends. I spent half the night crying happy tears.
The last 2 years I've had big birthday parties mostly because I was leaving and at that point in time, wanted to see everyone who meant something to me, but seeing the faces that are nearest and dearest to me around the dinner table alongside my family on my 21st was perfect.
Japanese dinner and speeches (more tears), competitive taboo (the only taboo worth playing), shots with my parents and aunt (9 bottles worth), dancing to 80s hits, massive sleepover, everyone waking up at 9am (we are so young guys).
Spent the entire day before I left with Liz because we only had 24 hours with each other, and Zihan was the ultimate boyfriend for refusing to see me because he said I should spend time with my sister and knew me well enough to know I wouldn't have the self control not to see him otherwise.

Pretty much flew back straight to exams, but on my birthday my flatmates surprised me in the park with a little picnic on the only sunny day of the week and it meant a lot to me to have everyone drop what I know they had to do to come down for it. So grateful.

People ask if being 21 feels any different, and I can't say it does but I think I have what I want.
I feel so safe in the relationships I have right now, and I think that's what growing up and old is about, feeling secure in the things and relationships that really matter, pouring more time and love into them, and being less concerned with the rest of the things that lie on the periphery.

Am now done with 2nd year, 5 papers in 2 weeks was no joke but I now have 5 months of summer. Spent today sending out emails that were long overdue, reading a little, writing a little, jamming a little, all the things I said I would do when I had the time. Have a lot of thoughts in my head but I've really lost touch with writing them down and am becoming really inarticulate.. will try. Little stes.

afraid to leave because of what I'm leaving behind,
truth be told- I'm not ready to let this go

We want to live by each others’ happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. 
We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

http://www.youtube.com/user/majesticcasual?feature=watch

Ethel's in for the weekend, so it's been great.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smackover,_Arkansas

Posted this awhile back on Facebook, but the video Nat posted and the quote is one I hadn't seen before,
http://blog.herbonestructure.com/2013/03/blog-post_4.html

While I love what Marina did, what is powerful about this piece for me is the audience. The many people who turn up and wait hours to connect with her. And how as they sit there and stare at the artist, she becomes a mirror through which they see themselves. And I wonder why so many cry.
http://marinaabramovicmademecry.tumblr.com/

Learned about planned obsolescence in the art lecture the other day,
How producers make things with a limited lifespan so it will become obsolete and the consumer will have to purchase a new one to generate more revenue, I guess Apple products would be a pretty obvious example, but we watched a video called the Light Bulb conspiracy,

While I understand that we need to spend to keep the economy afloat, it's scary to think that big companies have chosen to solve the problem by limiting innovation, and two centuries later, it's been concealed so well in the history that we've simply accepted these standards or sub-standards as the norm.

In the 1920s, a cartel called Phoebus formed with Osram, General Electric and Philipps to limit the lifespan of lightbulbs so consumers would have to continually replace them, and scientists had to change their tactics to develop more fragile bulbs that would have a maximum lifespan of 1000 hours,
And they fined other companies to limit research funds invested into creating longer-lasting bulbs,

Even when Thomas Edison introduced the first commercial bulb in 1879, he was able to design it to have a 2500 hour lifespan, and records showed that a company in the 1960s had managed to develop one to last 100,000 hours. Yet, today in 2013, most of our incandescent bulbs continue to last for 1000 hours, as Phoebus had set it back in the 1920s because it remains the most economically efficient - for producers.

A lightbulb invented in the 1800s and installed in a fire station in Livermore has been working non-stop for the past 110 years, and it has ironically outlasted 2 webcams but there's a live feed here:
http://www.centennialbulb.org/photos.htm

Met Shu for lunch today and she's been learning about resource depletion, and we're constantly exposed to the argument that we're going to run out of resources unless we as consumers start being more conservative with our energy use,  and yet there remains the contradictory goal of producers designing things to be thrown away.
I'm not quite sure what the solution is, as it is with all big problems, it feels overwhelming to just think of all the systems that are already set in place upon these concepts, but it still frustrates me that we're making these advancements in sustainable energy in uncharted territories, and the very light bulb in my lamp at home could undo this by being made to last a fraction of what it could.

What it could, is something that's been on my mind a lot. Especially since we discussed the idea of culture being limiting in anthropology the other day. Thinking of lost opportunities, and the limits we impose on ourselves that become so intuitive they feel like second-nature. Like why I would refuse to just  buy a ticket somewhere and travel without an agenda because it would be "obviously" unpractical or a waste of time. Yet how this is not actually a rule set in stone.

Was talking to Nat about why we liked travelling in Budapest, and I guess it's because you realize there are so many ways to "make a living". When you go to another place and see that people have chosen a different way of life that can work, your mind opens up to new possibilities, and it is liberating to realize that the paths that our societies set out for us are not necessary, though they may be the most straightforward path for us to imagine. And that we will not fail if we choose not to take them, there are other ways to live and to be.

This is what one man has chosen to do with his time, he's set up a Landfill Orchestra in Paraguay to make musical instruments out of trash and teach poor children to play it, another video we watched alongside the one about society's throw-away culture and planned obsolescence. Reminding me it's possible to do something that seems to run counter to the trajectory society takes-

Landfill Harmonic film teaser from Landfill Harmonic on Vimeo.

Anyway, this video is beautiful, and encompasses a lot of what I feel right now even though my thoughts seem to be free-floating, they are in actual fact connected by a thin thread and this captures it-

Had an arch/anth tutorial today about cognition and culture,

How there's a been a long history since the 1980s of anthropologists looking to classical ethnographies like Geertz or Evans-Pritchard to study cultures by observing them and recognizing they are all different and unique,

Then how biological anthropology developed in this context, where some anthropologists thought we should focus instead on cognition and how our human brain gives us a predisposition for culture,
Which is what makes us distinctively human,

Anyway somewhere along the way we got to talking about how when some people get into car accidents, they develop a condition called alexia or acquired dyslexia which makes them unable to read, but they could still talk and communicate, which caused scientists to realize we have an isolated compartment of the brain for reading,

And how we have this capacity called boustrophedon or the ability to read words backwards, and how children begin to write in this "mirror-phase" when they are young, and yet as they grow older they are taught instead the right way to read,
So we talked about how our brain has the cognitive capacity or potential for such a wide variety of things and rather than culture being the different ways this manifests, culture actually limits these manifestations to a specific form.

En route to church today, I met Jun outside her flat and we were stopped by these 2 guys who were tossing Maltesers into each other's mouths.
The guy waved his arms and stopped us in our paths, and gestured to his friend to throw one to him, which he caught. And then he pointed at Jun and said, "now you!" which she did,
and all 4 of us were genuinely excited about it, 4 strangers in the street clapping and laughing because someone caught a chocolate in their mouth,

And then he pushed the bag of chocolates into my hands and paced backwards then asked me to throw a few to him, "last one? We've got to catch a bus!" "yes yes last one", and then he caught it, "one more, last one I promise", caught it again,
5 minutes later we're finally done playing, he tells us to help ourselves to the Maltesers which I hadn't had one of yet thanks to my terrible catching skills,
"please have as many as you want, take one, two, three, whatever!" and we parted ways,

I think I might need to start chronicling these chance encounters.
I love how complete strangers can make your day lovely just by being themselves.
Just one of those days-

spent the reading week just past in Budapest with Nat, being with Nat is as comfortable as being alone but ten times more fun.
http://blog.herbonestructure.com/2013/03/budapest.html
Also she wrote about it.

Happy Chinese NewYear everyone, today I'm missing the Hoons a little more than usual.
To celebrate, I ate at Chinatown twice in one day, and Esmee and I made dumplings from scratch.


Spent 24 hours with Esmee on Saturday,
Spontaneously decided to go for the Fill-a-Bag sale at the East End Thrift Store, we were the 9th and 10th in the queue so we got a £20 bag for £10. Final count of items we got: Esmee- 28, Eve- 21.
So each item was about 40p, haha.
Reviewing my items made me hyper-aware of how much denim and blue I tend to pick.
Anyway, I got a very sweet fur-trimmed denim jacket, a vested jumpsuit that fits perfectly, and denim overalls I'm going to cut to shorts, along with many summer blouses, a couple of plaid shirts and comfy wool knits,
These're probably only half of the denim things I got:

Caroline & Jun had some friends over for a steamboat at theirs, with a lot of beef shabu shabu,
It's funny how when I'm away from Singaporeans for long enough, I begin to miss the familiarity,
The night wasn't suffocating like being around people from back home usually is, with a maximum of 1 degree of separation where everyone seems to know about everyone else's business.
Felt just like friends coming together to talk about each other's lives rather than other people's.
I enjoy seeing people with their other friends, it usually reinforces the things I like about them when I see them interacting with others.
And it might seem strange but my favourite part of the night was when most of the people had left, and we were doing the washing up, and I realized how at home I felt in their place.

John and I finally saw Ramin Karimloo, after a long-story-chasing-him-around.
Spent a good 8 hours with John today from church through til lunch to the end of the gig.
At one point at lunch, John's friends were saying something about him that I disagreed with, and he said "you guys have known me for a year, she's known me like all my life."
Definitely a good trump card to play.

Did the gig for the Clean Water for Ghana fundraiser,
So damn grateful to my flatmates for coming to support me,

Fridays are now my 14.73X days.
I've registered for a free online course on global poverty from MIT,
There're lectures by leading professors, readings, homework, an online exam and it's going to take an estimated 6 hours a week, which I can definitely afford on my free school days.
Can't pass up this opportunity.

https://www.edx.org/courses/MITx/14.73x/2013_Spring/about

Went to Paris over the weekend for Ethel's birthday,
We had a lot of food and wine, I made it a point to save thoughts from the past few months I wanted to talk to her about- I really have so much respect for my sister, she's one of the most determined and hardworking people I know and I'm so proud of where she is today.
I met quite a few of her friends on different occasions and felt glad she wanted to share this part of her life with me. It's a new chapter for all of us, I'm glad I'm always reminded when I'm with my sisters that distance counts little in comparison to the love we have for each other.
They are definitely my closest friends.

Met a stranger (then) on the train over to Paris and we spoke about art because I'm taking an art course and he builds custom-made frames for art galleries,
He asked me about the UNESCO article I was working, and I asked about the poetry he was writing,
So he told me about what the words he was scribbling were about-
He said he was commuting up to Paris to see his girlfriend who he'd met in December at his best friend's funeral, "it's funny how things come together when everything seems to be falling apart",
I asked him how he was doing now when he said the death made everything he was doing then feel meaningless in comparison and how he's finding it hard to get on with life, pause- and then he said "you never really.. get over it. I guess you only learn to live with it, the punctuations between the pain get longer, sometimes you can get on for weeks and actually be happy, and then one day you're like 'Fuck man, I just miss you so much', and so many things trigger it but you just have to try anyway."

When we got off at Gare du Nord, he introduced me to his girlfriend and then we parted ways.
It's funny how many trajectories a conversation can take, before we left we exchanged names but that was all. A single conversation that has given me a lot to think about.

When I came back to London today, I went for my Communication & Culture lecture on lying and deception. We talked about how privileged information sustains value in society, how relationships are made special by the information you choose to share with someone and not another.

The weekend with Ethel was so good, back now eating lasagna and apple tart Esmee made, tonight we're going to Chinatown with Megan & Kaya so I'm integrating myself back into the rhythm of my life here. I'm going to perform for the Ghana fundraiser this Thursday, and the support from my friends here has been nothing short of amazing. I used to underestimate the love language of time, but I can really see how it's the most important one out there, and like Zihan said, the only one that really counts.

Nat's birthday dinner at Duck & Waffle, 40 floors above London,
Drinks at breakfast club with daddy chin "dad will you do shots with us?" "what is shotswithus?"
11pm hot milk teas with Caroline and Jun on the way home,

Waking up to snow, bagels before 9.30am church service,
Sushi and Primrose Hill with Ken, one of those rare days London feels nothing like itself,
Home to steaming sausage casserole and banana bread (my flatmates are great),

looking at office gifs and waiting for the snow to cover my garden so I can make snowangels,
I was going to have a lie-in and then Esmee ran in at 9am screaming "IT'S SNOWING!!!!"

edit: went out to frolick in the snow at 3pm!!
photos from Nat & Esmee,

Tammy visited after deciding to stop studying at UCL and travel the world,
Told us the story about how she had her last euro and hitchhiked her way a 1.5 hour walk away from her couchsurfer's house, spent 40 cents on water with no idea what she was going to do next, and then she got a job that night teaching English- and has now gone from Spain to Turkey, Croatia, Morocco, to Russia- and now she's back to what was once her home to collect her Russian visa,
it's insane how life pans out, missed her too much-

idea from Nat.

highlights of my 2012

jan:
played scattegories into the new year with the entire family and porpor's duck soup and red wine/fell asleep on the couch while fireworks went off at midnight/usual tradition, trashing resolutions at zihan's on new years' day, meeting up with friends back home, meeting shu and nat before nat's birthday dinner, third wheeling with ethel and shannon, meeting kenneth and amadea before the last church service for breakfast, flying back to london alone for the first time, flat guys cooking dinner for everyone as a welcome back, jenny and soph's birthday at proud, kardashian nights, chinese new year dimsum and fireworks with the archaeology girls at trafalgar square, cny dinner at lisa's place with amadea and tiq, gigs with john (amos lee, the fray), mahdi's with esmee kaya and tarrant when we decided to be housemates, material culture lab book reports, running for volsoc, degas exhibits with ken, bar 55 cocktails with the flat

feb:
running through the snow for ruthy's 1950s birthday party at madame jojo's, ebay £15 james morrison tix with ken and snow descending as the gig ended, cluedo and lasagna night at vicky's, more gigs with john (charlene soraia, james vincent mcmorrow, first aid kit), dip-dyeing my hair at caroline and jun's the night before catching the 5 hour eurostar to scotland for reading week, valentine's picnic in the scottish highlands with nat, pancake day with the flat, signing up for the israel dig and getting it, two door cinema club with tarrant

mar:
meeting dimi for burger & lobster and walking through the park while waiting for our spot to clear talking about being in the UN, florence & the machine with the flat girls, staying at nat's apartment when her dad came to visit and being adopted for 3 days, tons of plays with nat (psychosis, all new people) when she came to london, les mis with john when we tried to hunt down ramin and failed, visiting nat in stratford, watching carol ann duffy read poetry live, 1920s archaeology ball where the new SAS was announced/made it through first year of uni, bollywood films with the flat as easter break began, feist with john

apr:
finally getting to greece with amadea like we'd always planned/white buildings/tricoloured seas/history everywhere/off-peak dinners/wine, spending a week in france with ahmai to miss home less, sufjan stevens for a night in london before leaving for, amsterdam with shu and nat where the tulips were in full bloom and it was beautiful, seeing my dad's face in prague as he came through the hotel room door and trying not to cry because I was so happy, visiting guoming in warsaw, taking an overnight bus down to krakow, sushi in poland for my birthday with my dad and amadea, birthday cocktails with the flat

may:
studying every day in the flat f kitchen and forming new patterns like stu coming in to play the ukelele and throwing sweets into people's mouths to distract ourselves, john mayer and mumford & sons on repeat, the month I discovered leya's brownies, rewarding ourselves after exams with a huge dimsum lunch, the avengers and the night when will stayed up til 3am to give us all characters and I was typecasted as the asian/running joke, lisa hannigan at southbank wishing I was watching damien rice, josh kumra, post-exam drinks at the court with the archaeologists where I first met them back in september, summer weather begins and we spend days in hampstead heath and primrose hill doing nothing and just being together, visiting surrey docks farm with soph and laura/soph cooking her famous chicken fillets and her brother coming over/feels like we're meeting each other's families, dressing up for the summer ball

jun:
2 weeks in west dean on my first excavation/hating climbing up a 80 degree incline hill every morning/weekend away with stine and megan at the beach, coconuts at regent's park with stine and megan since we missed each other once we got back to london, the epic barbecue at shandy's house with her family/one of those moments you realize you will keep these friends for a long time, shu comes to stay and we visit the serpentine pavilion and brick lane, trying to get to ronnie scott's the only night it was closed and going to a reggae bar instead/getting up and dancing anyway, ethel visits and we spend a week having good food, hackney weekend tix I got for free/first festival, ingrid michaelson

jul:
israel, a month spent waking up at 4am and sleeping at 11pm, waking up to sunsets over the galilean sea, unbearably hot days spent digging, singing all the queen songs and every song we know throughout the course of the month, weekends to jerusalem, to petra, to the dead sea, to tel aviv, the last night we spent playing with water guns on the hostel rooftop and then spontaneously running into the mediterranean sea in our underwear, knowing I would miss this so much as I left

aug:
back home for the first time in 7 months seeing zihan and my parent's faces at the airport, so happy to be home, nat has moved back into chiltern, falling back into patterns of supper with the mission trippers, lunch with sha/zara, weekends with zihan, lunch with bev, meeting tabs and michelle and squeezing in another meeting before I had to go, afternoons with naomii, weekend away with the family at a resort in bali, helping my dad out at the office/seeing how hard he works, nice dinners with zihan we justify by our months spent apart and introducing him to all the ciders which cost $12 in singapore, sunday lunches at my grandma's house without ah gong now but the family still as close as ever if not more

sep:
busker's festival with seeyue nick and zihan the original crew, winning the ypo sailing competition with dad, naomii writing in my moleskine in PEN the only pen mark I've had all year/I get to meet her uni friends and it feels like I can understand all the stories she tells me now, mildred comes home and we bring her out for a wedding dinner, flying back alone again, meeting my mentees and the new first years

oct:
seeing my housemates after months away, oktoberfest where we had sauerkraut bratwurst and beer and dressed up, seeing the flat girls again, joining artefact and pi magazine, kofi annan at southbank with ken, starting cultural wednesday traditions with esmee and fried-chicken tuesdays, deciding that I should join kickboxing now that I'm in my second year, bringing the archaeologists to hackney city farm to stare at miniature horses, fill-a-bag sale at brick lane with esmee and tarrant, thanksgiving at our place where we went to the park to pick fresh leaves as decorations and megan cooked up pumpkin pies and a turkey, fossil collective/luke sital with john, spending days preparing for the halloween party at abingdon, rekordelig winter forest with john

nov:
watching fireworks explode all over london from the balcony of the girls' flat, battersea park with megan and ralu, harry potter night where I dressed up as dobby and megan dressed as a snitch and we got sorted into houses, staying over at shandy's again and having schmores, brussels in reading week with kaya/esmee/megan where our travelling patterns fit each others' perfectly, japanese supper club with ken, boring conference, kodaline with john, saul william's literary mixtape with nat, lost lectures, too many talks-talk overload

dec:
secret cinema with john where they screened shawshank redemption only my favourite movie in the world, shandy cooked pakistani food for us again like last year, michael kiwanuka with the flat (tickets we bought a year ago because we thought we wouldn't see each other as often/we saw each other the day before), IoA winter ball, tom visits for the weekend, murder mystery party with the israel girls, ugly christmas sweater party at abingdon, mumford & sons with the flat girls, shu comes to stay and we watch luke sital again in a candlelit church with amadea and john, flying off to new york for the end of the year and the family trip where we are all reunited again


2012, you've been amazing.

wanderlust and hopeful plans for 2013-

my favourite OPI colour,


from Esmee's Dec 2012 album, in London-

happy birthday, nat nat