I turned 21 years young on October 28th of 2016.
I can vaguely remember the night of the eve where I spent the night of the eve with my friends, Kiky and Melisa, to eat dinner and watch Doctor Strange at Pathé – the biggest cinema franchise in the Netherlands.
Melisa was visiting for the night from Groningen. We had nothing much planned for us, we met up at the Rotterdam Centraal station in the afternoon and proceed to eat Vietnamese cuisine for dinner at Pho Restaurant and Noodle Bar because it was the only Southeast Asian restaurant located nearby the central station, and the reunion of us girls call for such occasion.
The three of us began as friends since we spent our days as students majoring in law at Universitas Indonesia. The three of us are part of the international program of the campus and were sent to the Netherlands to spend our seventh semester while the rest of our class remained in Indonesia. By then, Kiky and I are both studying in Erasmus Universiteit in Rotterdam while Melisa was at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. The three of us lived on our separate establishment.
So there I was, hours away from being twenty-one, enjoying a bowl of overpriced pho in the middle of Rotterdam with two of my closest friends. I ordered the noodle with beef slices and a small plate of spring rolls for myself. I cannot remember what the others had, or what we talked about then. I’m pretty sure it would’ve been about some sort of anecdotes of our experiencing living by ourselves.
I liked how simple and flavorful the food was. Added with the fact that I was living by myself in a whole different continent and missing the taste of home, I thoroughly enjoyed the dinner albeit the hefty price. As to how the food compares to the original pho I had in Vietnam years ago, the difference is pretty steep.
Funny to think that there’s a notion that traditional food would always taste best at its place of origin. However, judging from my personal experience, I find such a notion false.
I had the best Padangnese food in Jakarta.
I had the best bratwurst in London.
I had the best falafel in New York.
But by then, the plate of pho was nothing in comparison to the one I had in a traditional market in Hanoi.
After dinner, we traveled to Pathe using the all-reliable Tram 23. I decided to go to Pathé de Kuip instead of the one in Schouwburgplein because although further from the city, Pathé in De Kuip has larger cinema and more facilities.
Was it worth the 12 Euro ticket? When you grow up in a place where cinema tickets barely costs 3 Euro and had better seats as well as services, the answer is not.
Anyway, the movie was quite enjoyable. Some scenes were so meta and we’re thankful that we don’t watch in in 3D. I cannot imagine emulating migraines from the excessive editing the editor does for fun to mess up with the audience.
As we got out of the theatre, the clock is only 5 minutes away from midnight. It hit exactly midnight as we got out of the vicinity of the cinema.
I was walking in front of my two friends and as the clock strikes, they hugged me from behind. “Happy birthday, Selena!”
“You thought we’d forget your birthday, aren’t you?”
I replied with a “thank you!”
None of us talked about my birthday before this. None of us had anything planned, too. There were no cakes, no balloons, no treats, no gifts. Only that I turned 21.
Turning 21 may be considered a big deal in the United States when that becomes the legal age to purchase liquor and alcoholic beverage. It may also be considered a big deal if I drink, either. However, I do not drink out of my personal belief. I don’t want to ever be drunk.
Turning 21 would mean, I am now a subject under the Indonesian civil code. The only reason I know this is because I am a law student myself.
Turns out, turning 21 is not as big as a deal people make it is. I didn’t go partying, get stupid drunk, and able to show off my license everywhere. Thank you for setting up the expectation, Hollywood.
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None of us had bikes and little did we know that the tram system has stopped operating for the night. We got home by taxi that night – it was my first and only time taking a taxi in the Netherlands. We returned to my on-campus apartment and slept through the night.
I woke up two hours later because there was an orange light coming from outside of my window sill. My friends are still asleep and the clock shows that it was around 3 a.m. on my birthday. It is nowhere near sunrise, but the sky was bright. I think I was the only one awake in the room because of it. I don’t think it was neither a sprite, light pollution nor pure magic.
The night skies shine prettily above the low-story building and over a pond across campus. An answer from Quora explained that the phenomenon occurs due to the presence of sodium vapor street lights which give off an orange light that is scattered by the dust and pollution to create a diffuse glow.
So I looked it up. Nothing significant was happening at the time, but I found an article talking about bright nights from The Guardian. The bright nights were the result of converging “zonal waves” in Earth’s upper atmosphere.
I was lucky to have been able to witness the bright nights’ airglow with my naked eye. But then I was lacking sleep so I got back to bed I, recording nothing from the phenomenon except as a piece of memory buried in my mind until I write this story again.
When I woke up for the second time that day, late in the morning, my friends are all already awake and still with yesterday’s clothes and all. They decided to go back to Kiky’s place. I told them that I have nothing planned for today and don’t intend to have any. I assure them that I am okay with spending the day by myself. Convincing me otherwise would be useless – and frankly disrespectful; just do what the birthday girl said.
The rest of my day was spend ordering delivery pizza, making video calls to my family back home, and replying messages. All was enjoyed in the comfort of my room.
I thoroughly enjoyed the day.
I have officially become an adult; legal anywhere around the world; liable anywhere around the world. And the energy of being serendipitous on my own is what I think I needed to get through adulthood.
Collection. 