COMMENT SATURDAY METRO, 26 SEPTEMBER 2009 M10

By NIKI CHEONGniki@thestar.com.my

JUST a few days ago, I turned 30 and many people who are older than me have said one of

three things:1. “Aiyah, still so young.”2. “Time to start ticking on a differ-ent age box on forms!”3. “Don’t worry, life begins at 30.”

Truth be told, I wasn’t too fussed about growing older. In fact, I was ready to party. My birthday celebra-tion took place at Urbanattic in Kuala Lumpur last weekend with about 100 close friends and relatives join-ing me.

I was happy to see the many peo-ple from the different phases of my life there sharing the moment with me — my friends from primary school, college mates, my house-mate in Australia when I was study-ingthere, colleaguespastandpresent and, of course, family members.

It was hard not to be overwhelmed thinking that many of these people have seen me through 30 years — some more than others.

Seeing all this, it was only natural that I started asking myself what the last three decades had meant to me, and how far I have come.

Of course, the question didn’t pop up the very moment the clock struck midnight.

To be honest, the question has been playing on my mind at various times since New Year’s Day 2009.

It was, however, a difficult ques-tion to answer. What kind of equa-tions do you use, and what do you judge yourself by?

Dinner the night before my party with my good friend Nicolas put this in perspective. He is past 40 so he’s celebrated a couple more milestones than I had at that point.

In talking about growing older over a glass of champagne, he asked me to just think back to the different stages of my life and how I perceived being 30 then. What did I see myself doing at this age, and how did I see myself as a person?

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a policeman. I’m not sure I had set an age by which I needed to achieve this, but I don’t think I hung on to that ambition for very long either.

What I did enjoy doing — and have been enjoying since — was writing. I still have copies of short stories I had written and bound into the form of a book. They were most-ly local adaptations of Enid Blyton stories, but, hey, I was only five or six then.

As I grew older, my interest remained but my focus changed.

In primary school, I attempted poetry while in secondary school, I tried to write fiction. In college, I took all the writing subjects on offer as part of my media degree and, while I was in university, started blogging.

While I was in college, I started getting involved in local theatre. Over the course of a couple of years, I did everything from stage-manag-ing to ushering people to their seats and from acting to doing publicity.

I even entertained the idea of working in the arts full time.

As I grew older, I realised this was not feasible for various reasons; I even took a year off work to see if I could start a career in the perform-ing arts.

It didn’t work out, but at least I tried and I’m still dabbling in thea-tre, although only when I have the extra time to spare.

At university, I was very involved with the union. I was elected to my

university’s student guild, repre-sented my university at the National Union of Students (NUS) conferences and even won a seat on one of the national committees at the NUS.

Needless to say, my politics was left leaning and I was very vocal and passionate about issues with regards to youth, gender and equality.

It was never my dream to go into politics, but I was so caught up in the moment that I even stopped eating McDonald’s and buying items from brands linked to capitalism. I’ve grown out of that, perhaps mel-lowed with age. So maybe the ideal-ism has gone a little.

This one is a cross. Oh, and so much for wanting to be a millionaire by the time I’m 30 too.

There are of course many other things I imagined life to be like at this time of my life, and some are rather personal.

I don’t know if it was this “reflec-tion” exercise that helped me

come to terms with moving up the age box (one friend suggested I take three days off during my birthday and get drunk to forget all about it).

What I do know — and I can say this now that my birthday has passed — is that seeing everyone who came by to celebrate my birthday and the hundreds of well wishers on Facebook, Twitter and via SMS, none of the checks and crosses really matter when you have so much love, support and positivity around you.

Plus, at the end of the day, I’d still consider myself as pretty young. Sure, I’ll have to start ticking a differ-ent age box, but hey, life begins at 30 right?

■ Niki Cheong has plastered pho-tos of his birthday party all over his blog (www.nikicheong.com/blog) and Twitter account (www.twitter.com/nikicheong).

Family and friends join in the party as another milestone is reached

Turning 30 leads to reflection

THE BANGSAR BOY

NIKI CHEONGmetro@thestar.com.my

Hands in the air: Celebrating my birthday with family and friends.