·Surprise Surprise·

Nothing seems more surprising after you’ve read this.

Sit down and relax, ‘coz it’s going to be a loooooooooong one. Just bear with me.

Last Saturday, my housemates and I planned a gathering dinner for the celebration of mid-autumn/mooncake festival in the common room of UniLodge. As usual, we invited all sorts of people over, well, friends that we knew in mutual of course. We were supposed to have steamboat and barbeque that night. However, due to the bad weather condition (i.e. a whole day of drizzling and raining occasionally), we had no choice but to cancel off our bbq and proceed with our steamboat and oven-baked chicken wings which were supposed to be barbequed.

Only by the late afternoon that Hui Ling (one of my housemates) told me about Sako’s late decision to re-celebrate Hock Chai’s birthday since we haven’t celebrate it with everybody else. (i.e. we had already celebrated his birthday among ourselves during our trip to Jervis Bay) Of course, I had to go with the flow, since Sako already bought a birthday cake for him, plus, I won’t wanna upset her =)

Hui Ling assigned me a mission: to go to Sun Chuan’s (another friend that stayed in UniLodge as well) room to retrieve the birthday cake and wait for her by the elevator to go into the common room together after Jess (another housemate of mine) pulled Hock Chai away from the area.

Yummy food, regular chatting, fun games of “Bridge” and mahjung. Everything went on smoothly, well, sort of. There was one awkward moment when Jia Yi wished me happy birthday. I was like, huh?! However, I still thanked him ‘coz I thought he was joking since he also wished me happy birthday a few days ago, but I told him that he remembered wrongly. Okay, that’s all for the gathering, until the moment when we decided to take out the cake and gave Hock Chai the surprise of his lifetime.

Card Game: "Bridge"
Hui Ling: Poker Face

Mahjung

--------------------Mission Start---------------------

Hui Ling went up to our unit to get the candles and knife, while I went up to Sun Chuan’s unit to retrieve the cake; of course, without Hock Chai noticing. Upon reaching Sun Chuan’s room, I took a peek at the cake. To my surprise, it’s Gus Café’s white chocolate cheesecake. MY FAVOURITE!! Sako sure knew how to choose a cake ^^

After meeting Hui Ling by the ground floor’s elevator, she gave a signal to Jess to pull Hock Chai away. The coast is clear in like, 30 seconds! I was wondering: How on earth did Jess pull him away so fast? What excuse did she use? There’s no way she could have done that. Impossible. Thousands of question flowed through my mind by the second. I tried to convince myself that what just happened was purely normal, yet to no avail. Oh well, keep worrying would not lead me to any answer, as the saying goes, the show must go on!

We rushed into the common room, lit the candles, and waited for Jess to bring Hock Chai back, and when that happened, a birthday song broke out, as expected… I walked towards Hock Chai with the cake on my hand while the song continued. Of course, he looked somewhat surprised, as usual…

--------------------MISSION END---------------------

---------------------------------------SORT OF--------

However, something odd happened in between. Some of my friend sung the birthday song to me, weird. Well, I just assumed that they were joking around, maybe ‘coz I knew them too well. When the song was finished, I waited for Hock Chai to make a wish and blow the candle. That’s when the strangest thing happened. He pulled out a big white envelope and displayed it in front of me. I then noticed there’s some word on it, reading it, it says:

To: Geoffrey Tin Chung Yew!!!

HAPPY

21^st BIRTHDAY

IN ADVANCE!!

At that very moment, I felt as if all sorts of feelings and thoughts came rushing towards me, but the most significant one would be “shock”. Think about it, who would have thought of their own birthday being celebrated in advance, and it’s THREE MONTHS EARLIER some more. The worst is, I was the most awkward one, holding my own birthday cake, singing birthday song to another person, thinking of giving him a shock, ended up receiving a surprise of a lifetime myself.

Weird huh? Well, that’s not all. When you think that the most awkward part has passed, the worse is yet to come.

I was told to make a birthday wish. And I did, what an obedient kid I am to have listened to them. Well, you can’t expect me to reject their “sincere” offer, right? I mean, it is my birthday celebration after all. When I was making my wishes (and no, I can’t tell you what they are), Hui Ling blocked my eyes with her hand, that’s when I knew they were up to something.

But what I didn’t think of is that, THIS appeared in front of my sight when she pulled back her hand.

**********SWEAT**********

=.=” I’m like, wth???????!!!!!!!!!!!

Turned out it’s my birthday present.

Inner thought: HOORAY \(“,)/

When I opened the box, I saw a white plastic covering the small box in it. After I pulled out the plastic, *shocked* surprise no.2 coming out!!!

An IPOD TOUCH 32GB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What I always wanted, well, dreamed about =P and there’s engraving of my name and my 21^st birth date on the back.

Come to think of it, no wonder they asked me about my opinion on ipods a few months ago. That time, Kah Ee (another housemate) asked me and my other housemates about our opinion on which type of ipod to buy, ipod nano, ipod classic or ipod touch and which colour as well. I could still recall the conversation vaguely.

Kah Ee : 哪一个比较好啊？
Geoffrey: 看你prefer怎样的啰。如果你只是要用来听歌，nano就够了。可是如果你也要放戏进去，当然classic和touch比较适合。
Kah Ee : Hmm.. 应该是也有用来看戏的。酱的话，classic跟touch，选哪一个比较好？
Geoffrey: Hmm.. 这个也要看你prefer那一种啰。如果你要stylish一点的，当然是touch啦！
Kah Ee : 酱，如果是你，你会选哪一个？
Geoffrey: Hmm.. 不懂eh.. 还是像我刚才讲的啦，看你自己喜欢那一种的。
Kah Ee : I mean, 如果是你？
Geoffrey: Oh, Hmm.. 应该是ipod touch eh.. 你懂我的啦，Hehe ^^

Thinking back to what happened that time, I must be really silly at that time. They must be thinking: This person is so easy to be fooled around. Oh well, I don’t deny that. What’s wrong with being a little bit lagging and easy-going? Haha ^^

Anyways, Thank you everyone for the present!

-Hui Qin, Iris, Lu Hao, Wee Kee, Dexter, Sook Leng, Tian Long, Aron, Sako, Han Hui, See Mun, Jess, Sun Chuan, Yean Tat, Jay Seng, Can Yao, Hui Ling, Kah Ee, Willy, Hock Chai, Po Ren, Chivone, Shuyi-

I really liked it very much. And I’ll guard it with my life (but don’t take it literally, LOL)

This surprise birthday celebration was really a BIG success, guys. It was really a memorable one, I guess I won’t be getting one such as this for another few decades ^^ And yes, I still laughed to hell whenever I saw the photo which is stuck to the present box, on my desk!!!!!!!

Stamped to my memory;
Haunting me in nightmares.


Haha, Just Kidding ^^