Another Waypoint

I am 60 today but I dont quite feel 60. With the law of averages or whatever and God willing, I reckon I probably and hopefully will have a couple of more decades to go before I reach my final port of call. So while the PM and his new bride celebrated their wedding with a low-key dinner in Putrajaya last night, my family and I had our own quiet family affair at the Telawi Street Bistro in Bangsar. We dined on 'fusion' food: wild mushrooms, goat cheese, tapas, fresh halibut and sea bass with pasta and what have you. There was even a wickedly sinful 'volcano' birthday cake combo with stracciatella ice cream dripping with chocolate lava and the solitary lighted candle for this budding sexagenarian.


Nuraisyah and Dad at 60

We seamen have never been much for celebrating any occasion big or small, especially while at sea. I remember when my eldest boy Imran was born more than thirty years ago, I was away aboard an eastward bound vessel in heavy seas, weathering gale force winds off the Cape of Good Hope. The Suez Canal was still closed to shipping then. There was of course the usual congratulatory back slapping and the obligatory after-dinner cigars and port on the violently rolling and pitching ship. But after all that, it was back to the grind for everybody.

The occasion was after all, like today, just another waypoint in life's journey, and life, as they say, must go on.