when I turned 35 ...

(yes, that was a few weeks ago)

... it was my first birthday as a married woman (ugh, that sounds so.... old!)

it was certainly not the first time I didn't bother to mark it in any way

... it was the first time I "had" my birthday in an airplane (I was enroute to Switzerland)

no biggie... except that I was lugging huge bouquet of flowers around KUL, courtesy of the airline in cahoots with my parents.

I was very uncomfortable with the attention I was getting with that thing in my arms: heck, someone just walked up, put his nose right in there and inhaled deeply, it was all I could do to not leave my mouth hanging open in disbelief!

In the airplane itself (thank goodness it was a direct flight), I managed to stuff the flowers into a mini overhead luggage bin that was a perfect fit and situated right by my seat too - thank you, Universe!

I *had* turned the bouquet upside down in the KUL bathroom to drain the surprisingly large amount of water inside, but I suppose it wasn't enough, because, ummm, it still leaked out big time.... so unfortunately for the next person who used that space, there was probably a pool of stinky flower water at the bottom of the bin - ooops!

Anyways, so I made it safely to Zurich, where I was greeted by the newlyweds, my bro and s-i-l, who it turns out had been a bit late arriving because ...

... they had been putting finishing touches to this radioactive birthday cake! Looks are deceiving: it wasn't radioactive, and in fact was quite delish! Yummy, and sugar high on my first day in Switzerland, whoohooo!

(this is the first in a series of overdue recaps & pix from my recent vaykay to KL & Switzerland)