How you celebrate your birthday shows exactly where your life is at the moment. There was a full decade when it was all about other people; I closed a restaurant once, and a bar just to accommodate everyone I had invited. And these people weren't hangers-on- I was neither rich nor popular- but friends who at that point in my life, were there. And then were gone. I was gone, to a really far country no less. Each time I visit, things change more and more until everything just disappears and I wonder, going through the memories, if the things I remember actually happened.

I had celebrated turning 40 with a quiet dinner at home. I cooked all the dishes I wanted to eat- familiar ones like kare-kare, fried snapper and new favourites like rum and raisin ice-cream for desert- and I was perfectly happy.

This year, it's food again, and family, and new friends and a nagging suspicion that no one's going away just yet.