Tuesday was Princess’s 24th birthday. 

For the past 1-2 months I’ve been stealthily putting together a birthday surprise for her (with the help of Pinky, Mellissa and Wendy).  Planning a surprise for someone so far back was a lot harder than I thought, especially if you spend almost every other free non-working hour with the person you have the surprise planned for.

Anyway her birthday finally came after all the preparations and I must say everyone involved in planning the party and everyone who knew about it did a stellar job in keeping quiet. Some of us even ‘forgot’ that it was her birthday and didn’t even wish her so to her it was a typical work day.

Of course I knew I had to appear as if we were doing SOMETHING for her birthday so I told her I would take her for a good dinner. Since she loved Japanese food, I picked her up late after work and took her to Kampachi in Equatorial Hotel. She looked a little bit exhausted but the minute she got on to the dinner table she ordered away.

 The greedy girl ended up ordering like 3 main courses for herself… finishing none of them including this big bowl of sashimi.

In her defence, she thought that the bowl looked a lot smaller than it actually was so she ended up ordering an order of Soba and fried rice, both she didn’t end up finishing.

That’s in addition to some of the other sushi she ordered.

I kept my dinner simple and just got some beef to eat with some rice 

and some sushi

Over dinner she was telling me all about her day. How she even forgot that it was her birthday and how she doesn’t feel any special. Like it was a normal work day for her.

I just listened and nodded along. Then I told her that I felt a little bit bad for not planning anything for her for her birthday, a lie of course.

The funny thing was that as happy as she tried to look over dinner and as upbeat as she was, I felt like she was a little sad. That… well… she expected something more or was hoping for something more out of her birthday but just kept telling herself that birthdays are no big deal anyway.

So after dinner we headed back to my apartment for a bit. I convinced her to come by to watch DVDs or something. When we got out of the lift on my floor, I passed her my house keys and asked her to open the door. At that point my heart was beating so damn fast in anticipation of the surprise.

She whined

Then she walked into my dark apartment only to see in the shadows all the balloons Pinky and I had put up hours earlier. She thought it was a small surprise I had for her.. to decorate my apartment… so she said 

Then I turned on the lights and suddenly everyone jumped out of their hiding places and shouted

“SURPRISE!!!”

We all starting singing “Happy Birthday” with all 20 of us walking towards her with a custom-made Pink Hello Kitty cake Mellissa had helped me source for her weeks ago!

A month ago I had sent invites to all her friends that I knew, all her friends that I didn’t know, her parents and of course the Nuffies to attend this surprise birthday party for Princess. 

I was impressed at how everyone managed to keep it all a secret up till the end. 

Princess turned around to look at me for a while and she gave me a big smile. 

Then I let her off to go around like a social butterfly and hug all her friends there that night and serve them her Hello Kitty birthday cake. After we all had CAKE I pulled Princess to the side and said “That’s not all… there’s something else”.

I gathered everyone around the TV in my living room and Pinky played a video that I had been working on for a long time (with invaluable and very very significant help from Wendy). 

You see, Princess has lots of friends… but many of her very close friends also happen to be overseas and weren’t around to attend the surprise party.

So 1-2 months back I contacted one by one of her close friends, some whom I already knew but some whom I had never even met and asked them all to do a video each to contribute to a Birthday Video I was doing for her. Fortunately they had all heard of me and knew who I was so they didn’t think I was some stalker creep asking them to make videos for my own sick pleasures.

Then I snuck to her house one day and with the help of her mum got together a collection of old photos they had of her growing up to put in the video. 

I passed everything to Wendy to put together and she spent like… I don’t know, freaking 2,000 hours or something rendering the video together.

Thank you Wendy, I owe you dinner.

We turned off the lights and everyone sat down to watch the video together.

If you want to watch the video too. Here it is.

Part 1 

Part 2

Halfway through Princess started crying…. everyone thought she was crying because she was touched by the video but she later told me it’s because she saw her best friend Angela in it and that made her miss Angela more.

The night ended relatively early for us because we all had to work the next day. So after a quick present opening session everyone went their own ways.

At the end of the night when we were alone for a while Princess started crying again.

I asked her 

And she said

and gave me a hug.