Birthday Surprise

I live for great surprises, especially those that start with a birthday staycation and end with the subject on her knees. This is considerably one of my first proper staycays but it's one for the books. Somewhere in October, we celebrated Mun's 20th and it was every ounce of effort and penny worth.

I'll fess' up, this isn't exactly an elaborate subterfuge; rather, a last minute plan put together by 3 friends. The timeline began two week prior attempting to scout for a hotel that fit the broke students' criteria - cheap, big and nice. I know, use the same words at the red light district and you'll get a whole different situation, though it'll end up in a hotel either way. I digress.

As far as affordable hotels are concerned, we stand a far better shot with boutique hotels, and we agreed upon Parc Sovereign at Thyrwitt.

Once the hotel was settled, we essentially left the preparation and what comes along with planning a surprise party till the day before. But agenda of the day was:

- Get all the materials

- Print Photos

- Decide on Activities

- The Detailed Way Of Getting Mun To The Hotel, with Suspense Till The Last Minute

But first, a much-needed dose of what is the best form of chicken in the world thus far.

Our hopes of getting everything in Orchard were clearly dashed after a run to Daiso and around the mall only got us so much. And much was only confined to the boundaries of materials, minus the balloons and pumps. Well, the exact story is: we saw balloons, the sad colourful kinds at kids birthday parties. We're looking for class. Lol, since when did gold, silver and black balloons become the hallmark for tasteful things?

Eventually we got to Plaza Sing which ironically enough had everything we needed, including 4 fingers and Daiso, plus spotlight which is the one-stop destination when it comes to party. Why did we totally forget that?

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Alright, so here's the lowdown. Of the objectives we set ourselves up for, we basically only for the materials down in the name of there's no photo-printing shops in town area, and sleepy ambitions.

So the next day, ala the day of the actual surprise, our call time of 1:30 was pushed forward to 11:30. Saddest tale ever: I was on the sleep early, wake up early movement till the night before. Hunger panged and I ate supper.

I was probably to groggy and braindead but now that I look back at it, the photo quality were actually superb and they turned out to look like polaroids. More white space and it'll look darn cute with messages. Though it was tedious as shit cause we had to bluetooth over the photos into the printer one-by-one.

We had ideas for brunch before heading over since check-in was 3pm, but given our lovely weather, we settled for anywhere in the mall.

Lol, somehow we settled for Manhattan and I totally forgot for a second I don't eat seafood. I reckoned there'll be chicken and then I have my second epiphany - oh my god, I've been here before, and I always ordered the salmon pasta that was really, just subpar.

That said, the battered scallops were a total winner and I seriously think fried scallops in a box - very much like popcorn chicken is going to just sweep across the nation, should the owner one day receive my weak telepathy.

While we were at City Square, we settled on cake, 5 bottles of drinks and last-minute materials - of which broke our arms, on top of the shtuff we carried from home... and tripod. And camera.

On the cab on route the hotel, I was quite excited since the online photos of the room was quite promising. Everything looked spacious enough, with an private garden that looked substantial. Of course, it was much smaller than expected, but hey it's just an intimate party, so cosiness works.

Apparently there was some swimming competition the next day so Mun headed down to the Wave Mall to catch the meet-and-greet with some of the international swimmers. That bought us a lil' bit of time. 2.5 hours to be exact. So we cracked down to work.

But knowing us, work took the backseat and it 30 minutes of rowdiness, feeling guilty, self-motivate, 2 minutes of work, repeat. While Nadz and Ain took care of the balloons and deco, my clumsy hands found itself dealing with doing the collage and hanging up the photos.

All done!

While putting up the pictures on the twine, one of the photos were a group picture of us somewhere in Northpoint back in 2013, when we celebrated Mun's 17th Birthday. The trip down memory lane was joyfully emotional, to see that in just a span of 3 years, we've changed from young and mindless teenagers who really wanted to be a part of something to more matured adults with independent goals today.

And also really amazing to see how our friendship had blossomed throughout the years. Because we weren't classmates to begin with. We began as acquaintances this one time I crashed an after-school lunch invited by Nadz, but we've been going strong every since.

Let's fast forward to 5:30PM.

We booked Mun a cab without her knowing the location and the cab driver mistook her for a prostitute or maid when he asked her "You don't know where you're going ah? Oh, your sir book this for you one." Lawd, may hell freeze over so I don't have to deal with that awkwardness. Ever.

So everything was in place and all that's left is her cake in the lawn, everyone cept' Nadz and Ain to hide and hopefully the surprise to totally work.

Scene is all set.

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The anticipated tears didn't show but clearly she was surprised. Well, she did say she expected to see me, but hey that's a reassurance of buddy-hood. This would be the end of it, except there was a part two.

Oh, and by now I hope it has become clear the theme of the day was denim, or blue-on-blue.

At this point there were the five of us, but two more of Mun's close classmates were on route albeit a lil' bit later. XK was going to be decoy, fetching them up under the guise of 'I needa check my parking coupon'. Back in the room, it was attempting to stall time so suspicion wouldn't rise. And we did it the best way we know how.

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The full crew came in and the night was set. And in the name everyone dressing in accordance to the theme, pictorial commemoration was required, both in and out of the lawn.

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The evening continued with the much-needed nosh of pizza, which I am surprised to say that Canadian's pepperoni is actually good?! Like my years of prejudice against Canadian Pizza turned out to be totally uncalled for. Somewhere around this point I panicked about my deadlines and turned to Nadz' laptop to get some research for the article done. Total buzzkill, but y'know, gotta do what you gotta do. But before that, caught some moments of joy and laughter.

Lol, of course that didn't last too long. My head turned back to the crowd when the gossips moved to someone I know. The festive atmosphere dampened when some of crew gotta head back, but that gave way to midnight pillow talk, albeit the tinge of sweat and oiliness from the day.

Not those tear-jerker kind though, but a collection of misadventures and lots of #whyme's involved. And grammar correction... sorry Ain! We washed up for the night with rounds of Taboo and Heads Up. Deciding to sleep finally at 5:30am, we turned off the lights and at 5:31am, we decided nahhh, let's just not.

The remains of the next day involved the saddest breakfast and us laughing till it actually hurt. As sad as it was, it'll go down in our narrative as the most hilarious moments, ever. And also, if you're planning to head down to BK for breakfast at Wave Mall, don't. ;)