Happy Birthday Ming

[Poppy]

Happy Birthday, Ming!

[Courtenay]

Hope you have a fantastic day, Ming!

[pete9012S]

[Anita Bensoussane]

Happy Birthday, Ming! Have a fabulous day!

[Lucky Star]

Happy Birthday Ming. I hope you have a great day. We'll think of you later at the forumite's meetup.

[Farwa]

Happy Birthday, Ming! May you have many more!

[Moonraker]

Many Happy Returns, old thing. Maybe 2016?

[John Pickup]

Happy birthday, Ming. Sorry I'm late.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Many Happy Returns, old thing. Maybe 2016?

That would indeed be a "happy return"!

[Julie2owlsdene]

Happy Birthday, Ming. Sorry I'm late with your wishes too.

[Moonraker]

Not as late as Ming is in replying....

[Farwa]

Well, considering she last visited even more than a month ago, I suppose she's taken a short break off the forums. Or maybe she is finishing off leftover cake!

[Moonraker]

She's been very busy lately, including a visit to Niagara Falls!

[Ming]

Thank you so much, everybody!

It is lovely to be remembered by all you wonderful people. I really appreciate the messages Bannerman, Daisy, Francis, Eddie, Poppy, Courtenay, Pete, Anita, both the Johns!, Nigel and Julie!

My birthday was fantabulous. I had a whole group of friends come over to celebrate - the basement in my dorm was packed. Some people gatecrashed, but I was happy to have them - there was plenty of cake to go around! We played card games till 3am - we broke up the party really early since it was right after Fall Break, and all of us had exams three days after my birthday. On birthday nights, we tend to play cards all night, eat breakfast together and then crash till evening.

Yes, I have been taking a break off the forums. It's been so long since I read an Enid Blyton book that I felt like I didn't really have much to contribute, so I took to (over)sharing on Facebook. I do have a blog, which I won't link to because I only ever updated it when I was required to do so for a class, but if I ever do go around to writing down my adventures, I'll certainly share the link.

I've become more interested in photography, but unfortunately I don't have the equipment or the expertise to produce really high quality shots so I try to make do with my iPhone. It's a shame, really, because I spend so much time doing fieldwork in some magnificent places, and I often wish I had good cameras to capture the scenery. I like photo journals more than text when it comes to real places, so I suppose that's one reason why I haven't been blogging - incorporating photos takes SO much time. Easier to just bulk upload on Facebook!

Niagara Falls, where I went with some friends over Fall Break, was a lot of fun! And while Niagara was beautiful in its sheer power and majesty, what I really enjoyed was Tinker Falls in a small town around 2 hours away from my campus. I went there for a class, and we walked on a ledge behind the waterfall. It was a quiet and abandoned area and I loved how not commercial it was. Unfortunately, we'd had a period of drought so the falls weren't a sheet of water like I'd hoped but rather a thread like curtain.

I actually would LOVE to go back to the UK in 2016. Round trip flights from New York cost around $600-700 - a bit much, but it's cheaper than going from Bangladesh. I have a week off sometime in March or April, so that might be a nice time to visit! Fingers crossed I get a visa this time! I've been saving up for it, so lots of extra shifts at the library and really hoping New York raises its minimum wage some more.

I need to do a dedicated field program sometime before I graduate, so I might be spending a few months in New Zealand next year. I'll be applying for that program in the spring, and also to a program in Iceland, now let's see which one accepts me.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks for sharing your news, Ming. Your celebrations and adventures sound super - I love waterfalls and can never see one without thinking of The Valley of Adventure.

I hope your proposed trips work out, and I particularly hope you're able to make it to the UK in the spring. It would be fantastic to have a meet-up!