This is a special edition of Whatsup Wednesday.
Triple prime
I have a birthday coming up and I’m calling it Triple Prime this year, mostly because it sounds cool and because I’m turning 39, which – well, I’ll let you guess the other reason. Go ahead, I’ll give you a sec to figure it out.
… OK, time’s up!
Three times 13, a prime number, makes up 39. So for each 13-year milestone – that’s 13, 26 and 39 – I’ll share a story from my life.
My 13th birthday
It was the year before Y2K, Nagano Olympics was the hottest game on N64, and my best friend Matt invited me to his family’s lake house on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, to celebrate my birthday at the lake for the weekend. On the way up, listening to Celine Dion on the Titanic soundtrack on repeat, we stopped at a locally famous restaurant called the Roadkill Cafe (I’m not convinced it’s still in operation today), famous for a meat-only menu and waitresses that verbally abuse you.
Since it was my birthday, Matt, his younger sister Sara and I were taken back into the kitchen on the guise that we would be preparing our own dessert. Of course Matt and Sara were keyed in on a little detail that I wasn’t privy of.
A plan was in play.
We were each given a dessert before us. We were each given a can of whipped cream. We were each told to dress our own dessert with the whipped cream. Easy peasy. Newly thirteen-year-old me could handle this. We got the green light and it was off to the races.
As I peacefully began to whip my dessert, Matt and Sara, on either side of me, immediately started shooting me with whipped cream all over my head. Instincts kicked in and I retaliated, attempting to blast them back.
Sabotage!
The can I was given was out of gas! Without ammunition to bolster my attack, my only option was to endure unending humiliation, until their cans also ran out of gas. I was completely covered in whipped cream, down to my knees.
It was a great birthday memory.
2012 – A year abroad
I turned 26 while studying abroad in Vienna, Austria. A LOT happened that year…I met my wife that year, my team won the finance competition in my finance class, celebrated my birthday in a private underground club, I negotiated a deal to do some design programming in exchange for a commuter bike (which led to gainful employment), I went to Oktoberfest for the first time, and a lot more. It was a jam-packed year.
But I’ll share the story of a trip I took to Italy with my now-wife, Greta. From Vienna, we drove a few hours south and hit the Italian border, destination: Cinque Terre (“the five lands” in Italian). Cinque Terre have grown in popularity since 2012, but when we visited there were just a few sparse tourists who were all European. I think it’s the landscape that’s most breathtaking about Cinque Terre, or maybe the cliffs that plummet into the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. No I think it was the local wine paired with olive oil so fresh it had a spicy zing to it, soaked up with bread from the village baker, eaten on a veranda overlooking the very hills where the grapes and olives grew. That was it. That’s what made this visit special.
We stayed in Corniglia, the middle of the five towns, accessible only by car and by train, which turned out to be special. The other four towns are well-connected by the ferry that runs regularly among them. Corniglia, situated atop a sheer cliff, while it had stairs for pedestrians down to the water, had no ferry access. Many tourists who traveled in by train were unable to visit the elusive Corniglia due to train worker strikes that seemed to be commonplace across Italy. I don’t think that’s changed.
If you want to visit the Cinque Terre, bring your hiking boots, an Italian-English dictionary (leave your phone at home), and an appetite. You’ll experience a truly happy and wonderful part of the world. You can skip Genoa, just spend more time in Cinque Terre.
Almost 39 – Reconnecting with old friends
I reconnected with dear friends from high school, and it’s such a joy! A few months ago, at a BJJ competition, I randomly saw one of my high school friends I graduated with. Her husband rolls BJJ and was coaching one of the competitors at the comp.
So we’re inching up to 20 years since graduation, and this very same high school friend is also the one who organized our 10 year reunion a decade ago. After a bit of talking about it, we decided we have to put together a reunion.
Well she reached out today, via text message in a group with a bunch of our other friends from high school. I was overwhelmed with real warmth and it reminded me of how close we actually were. Our school was small, and truly intimate with teachers involved in every facet of our education, from teaching, to music and sports, to counseling and the off-campus activities like class trips.
Next thing I knew, in this group chat, we’re all talking about our families, our kids, sharing photos. Man, we’re all adults now and doing big things. I’m happy to be reconnected with these people who were once daily fixtures in my life. I’ll report back later on the reunion 😉
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