My 26th Birthday

My 26th birthday celebration was the most memorable in my entire life. I feel truly blessed. Blessed that I get to celebrate with some of my best friends. Who would have thought that coming down all the way to Palawan Beach at Sentosa to play beach games under the scorching sun, and then heading to Fish n Co restaurant, only to be ambushed into wearing a lobster costume while singing the birthday song would be so fun? And the best part of all; being given a gift that was so shockingly unexpected that I gaped my mouth open when I saw it being presented in front of me.

It wasn’t the gift that surprised me. It was the the fact that they gave me something when I totally didn’t expect it at all. And all these was planned and organised by Dan, whom I am so truly grateful. I don’t think I could repay the amount of gratitude received. Not in a thousand years. Truly, I am so touched and humbled by the fact that my groups of friends sacrificed their precious sunday just to come down and celebrate my birthday. Sundays are usually reserved for family days and rest days before the upcoming work weekdays. But they still made the effort to come down nonetheless.

The gift they gave me was the PS3 version of GTA V. The game that broke multiple records such as the most expensive video game ever made, and sales reaching 1 billion dollars within 72 hours, making it the top entertainment piece that raked in the most money. I am not crazy over the GTA franchise. I have played most of them no doubt and overall I enjoyed the game. Since it’s a game that made headlines even in mainstream media, it is tough to ignore it and not play the game. Eventually you get curious and you just had to try out to see what the hype was all about.

And so they got me GTA V. Imagine my face when I saw it in front of me when I received it. It was totally unexpected. The surprise gift was the surprise after all.  And it’s not every year you are subjected to surprise birthday parties, much less a surprise gift.

The day started by meeting up at Harbourfront MRT station. We got something to eat at the food court. We then headed to Giant Supermarket to get drinks, snacks and table cloth that served as a mat. We took a while to decide which mineral water to buy, which is funny, because imagine a bunch of graduates bickering over which is the most cost effective mineral water to buy and how many. In the end we bought it and we then headed for Sentosa.

It was packed, the monorail that is. So many people heading into the island. We had to squeeze our way through just to get inside the monorail. 4 stops later, we were at Palawan beach. There weren’t a lot of people. It was scorching hot. The sand was just too hot to walk on barefoot. Though it felt great, as the sand was super fine it was simply just too hot. It was quite a waste not being able to enjoy walking on the lovely sandy beach. We brought frisbees and a newly bought volleyball. There were volleyball nets to play with. We just had to make some minor adjustments to it and it looked great. But no one in our group knew how to play volleyball properly and so we scrapped the idea of playing it the real way. In the end we played lots of frisbee, which was fun, since we had so much space to play with.

We also used the volleyball to play Captains ball. It was great. The ball was actually perfect for throwing long distances to another team player. We didn’t keep track of the score but I am quite confident that my team was winning.

But alas it was too hot, and therefore we decided to cut our games short. I don’t know if it was the heat that exhausted us easily, or the fact that we were just getting old. At around 3 to 4pm, we decided to head to the showers and take our time changing and showering. We slowly made our way back to the mainland and headed down to Dhoby Ghaut, the Glasshouse where they had the Fish n Co restaurant.

That was where I started to dread. I knew the stories of staffs and service crew asking birthday peeps to do humiliating stuff in front of everybody on their birthday. I was a victim there. After we had our meal, the service crew came up to me and presented me with a birthday cake. But before I had the chance to say a wish and blow out the candle, I had to stand on the chair, don a red lobster costume, so that everyone can see me and sing the birthday song along with me. Embarrasing wasn’t enough to fully cover what I felt. But it was fun, I did it for me friends. Since they were willing to spend time with me, I played along. We took pictures with the horrendous costumes and then I finally got to blow the candles. Looking back at the pictures, I look kinda cute in that costume.

All in all, in was superb. I couldn’t have wished for more. As I reflect the time spent yesterday, I had the most wonderful fuzzy feeling I have never felt before. To know that your most treasured companion took the extra effort to not only get my a gift but really make my day a truly special one. If you are reading this. Thank you.