Welcome to Adulthood, they say.

I turned 21!! Oh man, where did all the years go???

The best thing about celebrating your birthday in the 21st century is Facebook. I mean, how great is it when your primary school friends, high school friends, aunt, uncle, sister’s father’s 2nd wife’s niece’s uncle, teacher and barber all remember your birthday!! Not only do you get great heart warming wall posts with “ “ and “xxxxxxxxxxx” “<3” all thrown in at the end of the messages, you get people coming up to you in person to say happy birthday. It’s that ONE day you feel special because you have 142 notifications and 32 messages pending on your facebook account that are all wishing you well.

So, I got a lot of well-wishers today, hand-shakes and smiles. It was a nice feeling.

What am I supposed to do now that I’m 21? I saw that a lot of people suggested that I “party-hard” and “go crazy.” Technically, I was legal enough to party hard for about 3 years now..and go crazy? I’m Fijian. Aren’t we all crazy?

Not only were both suggestions null and void, it’s Tuesday. The middle of the week. Tuesday isn’t the day to party. I mean..just listen to it’s name. Tuesday??? It sounds like a day you go pick corn or count the grains of sand on a beach. It doesn’t ring with the same sound as Friday or Saturday do. It’s just…Tuesday. I mean, even Wednesday is hump day and Monday is the plague of humanity. Sunday is lazy day. Tuesday? Tuesday just isn’t the day you’d want your birthday to fall on, no offense to Tuesday.

I celebrated on Monday and will do so officially this coming weekend. Again, no offense to Tuesday.

Now, I bragged about this on Facebook and Twitter so I thought I’d brag about it here too; my birthday was also the day the new Fiji Airways Airbus 330 was to make flight around the whole nation to debut the new design of Fiji Airways, still currently known as Air Pacific. I’m sure secretly, the pilot was my friend on Facebook and thought he’d pay tribute to me but I really was impressed with the amount of dust this event clogged into the air (metaphorically). Talk about entering the world of the big 2-1 with a bang.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to actually catch sight of the plane since I was sitting in class but I was lucky enough to hear it…which totally counts in my book. Imagine me, sitting in class staring avidly at the lecturer like the good student that I am when the sound of an approaching aeroplane flying close overhead suddenly roars to life. My head turned like a sun-flower following the sun across the sky and my eyes wandered away towards the window.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I wasn’t excited because a plane was flying overhead at a height that would scream “hijacking!”. I saw a lot of facebook posts proclaiming, “it’s just a plane.”

 I was excited because this plane had one of our most revered cultural piece portrayed against the wings and tail. Personally, I would think those cultural masi designs are too much of a treasure to be branded across an aeroplane. It has so much worth and so much meaning packed within that carries the essence and the root of our Indigenous people and their heritage. It should NEVER be used for corporate/business purposes, but that is the situation here and because the aeroplane carries that special inscription, it’s significance rises 10 scale. That’s our cultural identity being cruised through the clouds and I was going to pay the tribute it deserved. The opening and reception was reasonable. This IS not just a plane and I hope Fiji Airways is ready to deliver a hell of a lot more than Air Pacific ever did.

Sorry about that rant, let me just put away my flag and pause the National anthem.

As I was saying, I was pretty enthused at the idea of the Airbus making it’s rounds on my birthday. At least something exciting was happening on Tuesday. It didn’t mean too much for me though because I’m still pretty confused about reaching this milestone. Exactly what does this mean for me?

Someone told me it was adulthood. What’s adulthood? The moment you overcome puberty? The moment you hit 18? The moment you’re given the key at 21?

I was going to mention cartoons but who was I kidding. Cartoons are for everyone.

What does being 21 mean? It just means, you’re one year older than 20. Adulthood isn’t part of the age contract sadly. It’s actually the phase of mind you have to work towards, where you should be more proficient at making judgment of right and wrong and handling your responsibilities 10 times better than when you had less experience at life. The age 21 is just a standard year where you could have acquired enough experiences to grow out of immaturity.

What the bloody hell did I just say?

Anyway, I think I feel a bit more mature than I did the day before…..

JK

I feel like, the years are moving faster than I can run. I’m struggling to hold on to that essence of youth. It’s already my second day into the age 21 and I haven’t done anything spectacular except sit on my arse and typing out this ridiculously inspirational example of a great work of art that’s my blog post.

One of these days, I might have to post about things that’s actually an issue for our society and uni….but until then, I’m going to entertain you with my pointless self-bantering session. I just haven’t hit that part of adulthood where I’m ready to pull a few hits that have impact.