For the sake of a surprise

I've been thinking a lot about things that happened a few years ago, especially friends' birthday celebrations. I remember the secrets, the drama and the lies that went with the surprise... hahahaha, weren't those some good times.

This story goes back as far as October 1999. It was on a Friday night, the eve of a friend's birthday and we, (3 of her pretty close friends decided to surprise her with a banner). If I'm not mistaken, she kinda requested for a banner, in one of our previous conversations. Understandably, we had many of those conversations, and remembering the exact details can be a bit difficult.

Yeah, on Thursday and Friday afternoon, the 3 of us set to work. Don't exactly know what excuse her roomate gave her for her absence from the room, but 3 of us huddled in my room with the doors locked equipped with lots of paper, colour pencils, markers and tape and pretended to be the Van Gogh's of the new millenia (near enough - although our art wasn't that abstract, nor beautiful; none of us being talented in that area.... sigh).

Well, on Friday night, at the future birthday girl's request - 3 of us went to pray at the nearby temple - another friend was not exactly well and couldn't go - and this actually threw our carefully laid plans into a disarray... the banner could only be put up after she returned from the temple but right before midnight - i think, for the surprise to have a full effect.

On our journey back from the temple - this was a 20 minute walk which was very refreshing, she complained of sleepiness. Me and the other friend exchanged alarmed glances as she was supposed to be awake to get her surprise, and I proceeded to tell her that we should get some ice cream when we reached the dorm area hoping that it would keep her sleepiness at bay, and to give ample time for my roomate to help with the placing of the banner outside her window.

After the ice cream, we proceeded to my room first, as to give a signal to my roomate about our return... then my roomate put up a show telling us how sleepy she was, and we went on to the birthday girl's room to discuss about something (some weird package she received from our guy coursemates)After some time, her other roomate pulled her curtains close as my roomate had gone out to put the banner outside the window. It was kinda wierd because the people in that room never closed their windows before actually sleeping, so the question obviously popped out from the birthday girl, and the response from the roomate was utterly hilarious; "the cats outside are ugly".

It was awfully tiresome trying to tear her from the window and keep her awake at the same time, and also to prevent her from finding out in the midst of preparations... but it was quite unfortunate that the banner was still askew when she saw it, still not completely set up... The surprise was spoiled, and her other roomate was in disbelief as all our plans had turned the other way round, as it was impossible keeping her away for prolonged periods of time

Instead of getting wished "Happy Birthday", she received an "I hate you!"

Originally posted on May 14, 2005