The big 30. Yes, it happened. Albie’s 30th birthday has come and gone and so marks a new milestone not only in his life, but in our relationship. The number 30 use to be something we both dreaded in so many ways. Before gearing close to our 30’s, the idea of turning 30 meant we were old, set in our ways and that we had expectations of certain achievements completed, like being married, having kids and a stable career.

But as Albie’s 30th birthday approached faster than expected, we took the time to reflect on the wonderful years he has spent exploring the world, discovering his passions and hobbies and taking risks to make a positive impact in the world. If you wanted an in-depth article on this, Albie’s done an insightful reflection post on the lessons he learnt in his 20’s.

New Goals For The 30’s

Now Albie is 30 and I’m only a year behind him, we look back at what we’ve done in our 20’s and what we have to look forward to. We’ve gotten married, traveled the world and are waiting now for our baby girl to arrive into the world. You could say that a lot of good things are coming our way and so turning 30 didn’t seem so bad anymore- in fact we started to look forward to our 30’s and the goals we will soon set in the next chapter of our lives.

In saying this, turning 30 still was a big deal but we were no longer afraid of the number anymore. We were content with where our lives had taken us and the experiences and accomplishments we achieved thus far. It’s also a good opportunity to not only reflect on what you’ve done in your 20’s but set new goals for the next 10 years.

This year Albie has some real serious body goals- he basically wants to be healthier and ultimately get a six-pack that his wanted for many years. Taking this goal seriously, he has already taken the steps to make this happen and the results so far have been impressive. With a mixture of healthy eating, counting his calories, working out and putting his health as a priority this year, we’ve already seen a loss of 4 kilos in less than 3 weeks.

Celebrating Albie’s 30th in Taiwan

The first thing we did was eat out at the new shopping complex near our apartment called Dream Mall over the weekend. It has a pretty good food court with a large variety of Taiwanese cuisines. Albie opted for a sizzle hot plate of crumbed fish with rice and soup.

It was nice going to the Dream Mall located in the East District of Tainan City. Given the weather has been hot since we moved to Tainan, we preferred to go locally and the Dream Mall is less than 10 minutes walking distance from our apartment. It was an added bonus that Buckwheat, our dog could join us there.

If you didn’t know, at least 90 percent of places in Taiwan are dog friendly, which was one of the reasons why we love Taiwan so much! 🙂 We also bought a slice of chocolate cake, which we later shared watching the movie The Brothers Grimsby. The movie was freakin’ hilarious, but a lot of ‘out there’ and crude jokes. Definitely not a suitable movie if you didn’t like any of Sacha Baron Cohen’s previous movies.

For his birthday, I got him a number of things. One of which was a wave board. He was super excited as it’s been on his wishlist for 2 years. Now that we settled into Taiwan, I thought it would be the perfect gift for him, particularly because his love of waving originally came from a wave boarding session he did 2 years ago in Anping, Tainan. It was a government sponsored program that promoted healthy living, exercise and targeted mainly kids (or big kids at heart) and allowed locals to try various sporting equipment, one of which was the wave board.

I ended up getting him a standard wave board by a brand called Oxelo, which is actually a French brand. It’s internationally known for its skateboards and sporting gear. Though we had never heard of the brand before, here in Tainan, we were able to visit Decathlon, a big sporting goods store to try each of the available Oxelo wave board models out.

Since his birthday, Albie’s been making much use of his new wave board, taking it along with us on our afternoon walks with Buckwheat around our area and whenever we go to parks. Basically, anywhere where there’s a good surface to wave, his been taking full advantage of it.

Although it may not seem like we did a lot for his 30th birthday, I think we’ve come to appreciate the simple things in life. Having only settled in Tainan 1 month prior to his birthday and the fact that I’m currently in my second trimester of pregnancy, spending good quality time with family and share lots of laughs was the perfect way to celebrate this incredible human being 🙂