Inter alia: 20/11/2006 - Pleasant Surprise

It was a pleasant surprise. It’s been 5-6 years since I last received any bouquets from Brandon (not that I am counting ha ha), so when I saw the flowers on my desk after coming back from the hair salon (again?!) after lunch, it was a pleasant surprise. I was so surprised that I was oblivious to the fact my big boss (Head of the Solutions Division) followed me to my desk and started snooping about the flowers. He took out the card and I jokingly said, “Hey, I haven’t even read the card!” And he said, “Aiyah, the rest of the team have already all read it lar, I am not the first. I just came here!”. I couldn’t think of any smart retorts then. In fact, I couldn’t think at all then… I was too shock. I remember I murmured under my breath that “Luckily, it’s from my husband!”, to which my megaphone boss reiterated, “Huh, lucky ah? Why lucky?” … hahahaha… I just laughed and let his imagination answer that (not sure if he has any imagination hahahah)….

Only in the morning I was telling my buddies that I don’t want flowers as they were a total waste of money and they can’t be eaten! (Really, when I found out the price of the flowers, I thought I could make better use of it to go for hair treatment instead or maybe Geoducks!!). And I was so confident that Brandon understood me well enough to send something more practical (or perhaps edible!). But what do you know!! A bunch of flowers unveiled before my eyes just as I stepped foot into the office on that unsuspecting afternoon.

Anyway, after calming down for a few seconds, I started checking out the bouquet. Hmm, Lilies of the valley… and some pink roses and Forget-Me-Nots …. And some red seeds which I have yet to find out the names and their meanings. Anyway, a fellow colleague, Richard, said that pink roses are not appropriate, it should be red. I have yet to find out the real meaning but Richard sounded suspicious when he asked me “why pink roses?”. Well, knowing Brandon, he would just tell the florist to get me some lilies as he knows I liked them. The rest, like he puts it, are just mere decorations. And I don’t think he would bothered to be so meticulous as to find out what matches with which flower and what each colour/flower meant. So it was really a surprise that he even took the trouble to go to the florist at all. (Well, later I found out that the florist was located next to his agent’s shop ha ha. He was there on a business meeting). Oh, the funniest thing was the flowers came with a “Kinky White Feather Scarf”. Well, colleagues were laughing their head off because of the term, “Kai Mou Ngap Huit” in Cantonese (Chicken Feathers, Duck Blood). And they were implying that Loke Wee, a male colleague who had received flowers and a cake for his birthday just 2 weeks ago, has caused other’s to be in “Kai Mou Ngap Huit” situation as they were using him as a “Standard” or “Benchmark” for receiving flowers on birthdays. Loke Wee said that he has already given serious (*but not harsh) warning to the girlfriend not to send those next year. Pity the girlfriend ahahaha… I remembered getting the same warning from Brandon when I sent him some yellow roses years ago.

Well, the celebrations went on at the karaoke. We sang our hearts out with mostly duet ballads. We even took some videos of our singing. Boy, were those videos funny! It captured our horrendous singing and also my “hearty” laughter. Now I know I am not that petite after all hahahah…. We left early as we wanted to celebrate with our son too, so we bought an ice-cream cake home so that son can blow the candles as well. My son was happily jumping around like a frog and stopped in front of me and asked me to kiss him. I thought he just learnt the Frog Prince at school and wanted to turn into a Prince with my kiss. So I obliged and gave him a peck on the head. When I did, he jumped up and said he has transformed…. Into DONALD DUCK! Hahahaa… Then he told me he has just watched “the frog prince” on Playhouse with Mickey Mouse. Hahaha, the things they teach on TV nowadays….

All in all it was a beautiful celebration, one of the best I would say. But then again, every year I would say it’s the best, much like the James Bond advertisement which always claim the current 007 movie to be “THE” best James Bond movie ever each time a new James Bond movie is produced. Ha ha. Didn’t manage to catch the Casino Royale as planned but will probably catch it next week when it’s under “free list allowed”. Must make use of the free birthday ticket, you see. Hahahahaha… Cheapskate….