I just realized that 3 weeks has passed since my birthday and I didn’t blog about the little surprise the Nuffies gave me. So here’s the story. The Nuffies were planning something for my birthday but they found out that Shorty was already bringing me on a surprise trip to Krabi. So they decided to do something a day before I left. It was the Friday before the 6th of June.
I walked into the office as usual in the morning. Turned on my computer and sat down to sign some documents. After some 15 minutes or so, Nicholas our Country Manager came over and said he needed to talk to me in private. Whenever he says that I always get paranoid that he’s going to give me some bad news. Like someone screwed up something and we had a mess to clear up or stuff. So I nervously walked with him towards the little glass meeting room in the middle of our orange office but he said asked to use the other meeting room at the back of the office. So okay I followed along.
When we got into that new section of the office I noticed it was dark.
All the lights were turned off and Nicholas said “WAH HALF DAY AH!?”. Hui Wen here was apparently hiding behind the wall waiting for me to come.
I thought an entire department was late for work. Then when I walked in the lights turned on and I saw everyone in our Nuffie meeting room filled with balloons.
They started singing Happy Birthday and brought out a cake. I’m good with singing birthday songs for other people but when it comes to people singing birthday songs for me I feel a bit awkward. Like don’t know what to do but just look around awkwardly.
After I cut the cake, they all showed me the big “birthday card” they put together for me. It was on our Ideapaint wall. You see in that particular meeting room we didn’t have a white board. Instead we had a wall painted with this special paint that allowed you to write on it with a marker and just rub it off later on. They each wrote birthday wishes on the wall filling it up entirely.
After they were done “touching” me, the Nuffies decided to torture me.
They made me hold Stewie, put on this bib and answer riddles.
The riddles were that they will tell me something really vague about somebody and they asked me to tell them who it was. If I got it wrong I had to do some sort of punishment. Like sit on a balloon and pop it.
I tried sitting on one balloon but boy were they good quality balloons. It just refused to pop.
All this while everyone was busy taking pictures of me making a fool of myself.
And yes everyone had a good laugh.
Perhaps it was one day in the year they could make fun of the boss. It was all in good fun though and at the end of all those riddles they gave me my present. It was this Mont Blanc pen.
I think it’s because they noticed how I just used any regular kilometrico pen to sign all the documents and cheques that I have to sign every day in the office. So now I have a nice pen 🙂
Was a really nice birthday surprise. Every year the Nuffies always plan something nice for me.
And the Nuffies that are based in our Singapore, Philippines, Australia, China and Hong Kong offices sent me loads of wishes. I’m so blessed to have them. They’re the reason why Ming and I could never sell the company we built in spite of all the offers we’ve gotten in the past 4 years.
To all my friends who wished me on that day 3 weeks ago, thank you so much for your wishes 🙂 I’m 27… and really lucky.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space