Most people celebrate birthdays with cakes and dinner at fancy eateries - the kind that fool you like a foolish fool. They may sing the birthday song for you but they’re also hellbent on making a spectacle out of you just to earn your free slice of cake. Such birthday fuckery just for the amusement of twisted friends/diners.  

This year round, my birthday itinerary tried to one-up that sort of fuckery and almost went for broke with an elaborate plan that included being blindfolded, driven to an unknown location whereupon I was meant to be hooded and treated like a POW detainee - complete with a faux video taping session where the terrorists would make their demands and upload the video to YouTube. 

Luckily, that plan got foiled. I still had a plenty other highlights in store for the night:

• Bacon party #2. Twice the bacon (nearly 2kg worth)! Less the everything-else! 
• Getting a friggin’ 3ft tall AT-AT. It’s the size of my dog. It has bajillion movable parts and I will be using it to store my coffee mugs. Just cos I can.

In the end, my birthday card pretty much summarized all the good things about turning 27:

• It’s better than being 47
• You get to play ‘grown up’ for real
• You get better gifts - specifically, huge-ass toys you only dreamed of owning as a kid

This AT-AT may be 15 years late for pants-wetting excitement, but it still counts as a really wicked birthday gift. Thanks Bel, Ian, Edwin, Matt, Ching, Ai Lin & Jason!

For my next birthday, I’m eyeing that jet fighter or mech-suit that has a built in iPod player.