Today’s lunch was a celebration of hard-boiled eggs, citrus glazed chicken, white rice, garlic bread, a kick-ass salad a la Bouaziz, and, above all, Tuan-Ching’s twenty-third birthday.

Assembling the birthday cake ensemble was daunting. Rather than simply adorning the cake with 23 candles, the decision was made to light letter-shaped candles in the traditional H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y configuration. This seemingly simple process was made nearly impossible by candle wicks buried beneath candle wax—a manufacturing error that slowed the lighting process, causing the lit candles’ figures to warp and obscure as they sat aflame, watching some goofball fuss with a child-proof lighter.

Lainie’s lighter kung fu saved the day, and right when Tuan-Ching leaned over to blow out all 13 flaming candles, her hair caught on fire, at which point time seemed to slow to a halt. Many of us suffered severe cases of bystander apathy—verbalizing incomplete, incoherent sentences in frantic tones—none of which had any effect on the flames crawling up Tuan-Ching’s lovely locks. Luckily, Tuan-Ching executed the well-documented involuntary shrug-because-my-hair’s-on-fire maneuver, depriving the flames of oxygen with adeptly applied shoulder pressure, extinguishing the flames and saving herself in the process.

Although jungle[8] earned high scores for lunch preparation on April 16th, their fire preparedness was feeble, to say the least. To remedy their ineptitude, jungle[8] with be conducting drop-drills and fire-extinguisher practice for the rest of the week.