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Wednesday, July 12, 2006


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It's my birthday tomorrow,

I'm not going to tell you how old I am but you should be able to work it out given a few clues.

It's the number of teeth in a child's mouth.
It's the number of letters in the ancient (and modern) Greek Alphabet.
It's the number of points on Backgammon board.
It's the number of cycles in the Chinese Solar Year.
It's the number of frames per second in a motion picture film.

You must be able to get it from that. Interestingly, it is also a number that is considered unlucky in Cantonese culture because it sounds similar to "easy to die". Gruesome.

I am having a day off work and am going to travel to York to become a tourist for the day. I get so giddy on my birthday that I drive my Wife mad; last year she took me to the Cadbury's Chocolate Factory and I am surprised that I am allowed to go anywhere this year.

It is a bit wrong that you have to book a day's holiday on your birthday, it's not like you can abuse the system; although on second thoughts the Queen gets two birthdays so she's probably ruined it for all of us.

When I was young I always used to meet people who shared the same birthday as me, a girl in my class, my teacher; even now the cleaner in my office has the same birthday as me. What is the chance of that - one in 365 I would guess. The strangest thing is the chance of knowing two people with the same birthday; if you are in a room with 23 other people then there is a greater than 50% chance that two of them will share a birthday. That sounds low to me but it is true.

In the 50's and 60's there was a list of things that you would buy for girls on their birthdays, just to show you how times have changed I have reproduced it below.

10th birthday - lollipops
11th birthday - gum drops
12th birthday - tootsie rolls
13th birthday - bubble gum
14th birthday - dog biscuits
15th birthday - life savers
16th birthday - sugar cubes
17th birthday - lemon drops
18th birthday - cigarettes

Cigarettes! Dog biscuits! Which is weirder now - probably still the dog biscuits.

Another thing I found today whilst searching was that people celebrate a golden birthday or champagne birthday when they turn the age that corresponds to the date of their birth. I had mine at the age of 13 without even knowing it, I feel a bit gutted about that.

I will leave you with one last thing that I found on the Wikipedia site. Wikis are not normally known for their humour so this is a rare find.

"The person whose birthday it is makes a silent wish and then blows out the candles; if done in one breath, the wish is supposed to come true, especially if the wish is for cake"

2 Comments:

At 4:19 am, Blogger The Special Zipper said...

Bugger the clues .. I went back to your profile which states 23 so let's go for 24!

I like to do things the easy way.

Have a great day tomorrow.

www.beatinghearts4kids.blogspot.com

 
At 10:02 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday! Hope you enjoy the day in York, one of my favourite cities!

 

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