My first Facebook birthday...

Pretty interesting...maybe my last FB birthday since i'm not a huge fan but my guess is that i will still be curious about the lives and loves of my 200 FB 'friends' after i leave Ghana ( in 247 days but really who's counting!) and so I will stay with it. Might change my birthday though, so it is always just past.

Note...i did NOT include the Year of birth in my Profile!

As we know, Richard, does not celebrate birthdays at all! and has not for many years. Indeed if it wasn't for the fact that Thomas Kelman-Brown shares the day then it would be a distinctly non-favourite day! He hasn't been high on B'days (wait, maybe i should reword that!) since Joe DiNunzio and Alan Rosenwald had him 'b'day greeted' at ADC by a young lady wearing apparently only a raincoat! Prior years in this his dotage were greeted with only surly 'thank you's' to the persistent few who seemed to delight in reminding him in the addition of one more year to his age.

Then along came FB!

FB gave me B'day greeting for 24 message-filled hours from all over..in many languages..English, Scottish, American, Brazilian, Romanian, Moldovan (separate language?), Italian, French, German, PC-speak, Persian(Farsi?), Ghanaian..with GOD also invoked from there and who knows what language she speaks!

The first in yesterday was Tricia Petersen Rasmussen..one of my my 72 new best friends from 01 June 2010..the new batch of PCV's headed for Ghana. I like Tricia..she's a committed, strong PCV here ..and that was nice but wow..thank you FB! but Tricia..will you still need me, will you still feed me when i'm 64?

And lots more from the ranks of the Ghanaian PCV's ...really, haven't they better things to do with their time!!! (well, yes..but FB says it's your Birthday!!!)

then they just kept pouring in..from a Royal High School friend who has a memory of a sometimes ill-behaved young lad (did he say 'tear-away?) in school..he must

have me mistaken for someone else!

..from Carola in Napoli who sent me a lovely picture of the Bay of Naples and then gently corrected my bad Italian and made me hungry for spaghetti con vongole verace and the best espresso machiato i ever had.

From Moldova..via Ellsworth and Shaw's...

And from two of the (very-well) Bred girls from Lugoj..cel mai frumos orasul in toate lumea- (please don't correct my Romaneste)

From Baharak who always finds me on my birthday...xxxxxxx..and she can be in some pretty hairy places.

From Billie..my favourite young lady, fortunately not old enough to get on FB..she'll set records for numbers of friends

Oh and from banks and credit cards companies and my contact-lens supplier, and a support forum for a piece of dongle-unlock software that i could never get to work...eh????

and on and on...

but the capper was my friend Noah, here in Whuti. Now believe me, i do NOT go around here advertising my coming birthday but when i went down to the JHS yesterday morning for Library time..the 'Library' comes to the classroom since we don't have our super stools and tables yet ( a bit like Macbeth and the Forest...) .

he had made up a huge Happy Birthday poster and got all the classes and all the teachers to sign it and THEN took me round each class and had them sing 'Happy Birthday' to me while i stood in front with a silly grin on my face..pretending to weep. while Noah almost split his sides laughing....and how did he know it was my B'day..FB of curse! (int. sp)

..altogether a very odd but funny (even memorable) birthday...wow, thank you FaceBook!