crazymalc.co.nz - Home Page of Malcolm Trevena

Happy birthday Crazymalc! 33 years old!

17th May 2006
33 years old today! Woot!

Time to have a look back at previous birthdays and other momentous events.

Prehistory
Life for me started here - in the house I was conceived in. On that glorious day - when my father's sperm met my mother's egg - the miracle of life occurred and a single cell starts its long journey into becoming me, Malcolm Roy Trevena.

I figure the date of my conception was September 11th 1972 (I was a premature baby). So, you see, September the 11th was famous way before that whole ghastly business with the Twin Towers.

Early Days
Move the clock forward 290 days and you have this, a six week old Malcolm looking dopey in his first ever photo.

Zoom forward another eleven months and you can find me celebrating my first ever birthday. Suitably cute photos ensue for many years until my sack-of-soup-type ugliness set in.

But that is another story...

I thought it would be interesting to look back at my last three birthdays. They are all quite different.

30th Birthday
I was in the bustling metropolis of Gore in South Otago for my 30th birthday. Gore is famous for being host to the annual New Zealand Country Music Awards. As camp as it sounds. I was there for the 10km fun run with my wife Judy. I was a tubby bastard at the time but still managed to chug around the course.

We spent the night before the run at a hotel that was a rest home in a previous life. The rails that adorned the toilet walls proved very useful after the run.

My most vivid memory though, is one of me crying my eyes out the night before the run. Just bawling and wailing like a little girl. I wasn't even sure why I was crying, but boy did I let rip. Maybe it was pressure from work. Maybe it was problems in my relationship with Judy. Maybe it was that New Zealand had just lost the Bledisloe Cup yet again...

Dunno. Not at all sure even if hindsight. Perhaps it was an indicator of my impending mental health problems. Which provides a nice segue to my next birthday...

31st Birthday
My next birthday was spent at the Ashburn Psychiatric Hospital. Things had not gone well since my 30th birthday.

My birthday occurred fairly early on in my treatment. I was so lost, frightened and bewildered at the time.

The birthday party itself was reminiscent of my first. A cake, lots of sweets and sugary soft drink. We played many child-type party games. Joining in a progressive conga line to the tune of "The Ants Go Marching Two By Two! Hurrah! Hurrah!" will forever remain a memory.

The birthday party probably paints an unfair picture of Ashburn. It almost seems as if we were a bunch of delusionals, which is not at all true. Throw in the girls who were too terrified of food to partake in the cake, the soft drinks that were there for the alcoholics whose next alcoholic drink could quite literally be there last and add in a Muslim looking dude frightened by something he couldn't quite put his finger on - and you'd get a better picture of life in Ashburn.

The birthday at Ashburn was a horrible day for me, even by Ashburn standards.

32nd Birthday
My 32nd birthday saw me out of Ashburn and living at Sheen Street. I had returned to work at Enabling Technologies on a part time basis but things had not gone well. I was seeing Tara Clark - my clinical psychologist - twice a week to try and sort out my inner turmoil. I had become a very angry man and I was struggling to know what to do with the anger.

The fear was still there though. I got so freaked out at the thought of anybody contacting me on my birthday that I decided to check myself into a local motel so that people couldn't find me at my home or reach me on my landline. My sister and parents did manage to get hold of me on my batphone and wish me a happy birthday.

I had watched three movies during the day. One after the other. I'm pretty sure one of them was the Spongebob Squarepants movie. Spongebob is the man!

33rd Birthday
So what about my most recent birthday? How did that go?

I received a number of unexpected emails from people wishing me a happy birthday. Was a pleasant surprise and a nice start to the day.

Most of my day was quite quiet. I watched a DVD called The Constant Gardener, which is all about the dodgy dealings of pharmaceutical companies in Kenya. It was shot on site at a refugee camp that looked similar to the Budumburum Refugee camp, my future home.

I also watched Hotel Rwanda recently. Very very good and a real eye opener.

In the evening I saw a film called Invisible Children with my father. It was all about the child soldiers in Northern Uganda. It was organized by some activist types and shown at a local university. I had a chat to some of them during and after the movie.

I will be joining them on an awareness walk on Saturday week. I am going to write more about the child soldier situation once I have gone on the walk.

The walk is on same day as the Super 14 rugby final. Missing the game will be annoying as I love watching rugby. Kinda nice though that I have something in my life that I am more passionate about than watching muscular men run around in short shorts.

On the 18th I got together with my family for a birthday celebration dinner at the Happy Days restaurant. Was a nice night out.

Wrap Up
If I were to sum up my mental state during my last three birthdays, it would go something like this:

30th: Blubbering Mess
31st: Lost and frightened
32nd: Impotent anger

I think my current mental state could be best described by the word "Excited".

It's a nice change.

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(c) 2005 and 2006 Malcolm Trevena.
All the stuff on this site is written by me, Malcolm Trevena. Feel free to link to this page. Heck, you can even copy stuff from here if you want. Just make sure you sight me as a reference.