10 March 2007 Surprise!

This marked the part 2 of this year's birthday celebrations. This involved a rather sneaky but ingenious plan hatched by fran to make this a surprising but memorable occasion.

It all started when my friend, Farhan, messaged and asked me out for coffee on Saturday at 5pm. This was rather odd as we have never met for coffee before dinner. I was not keen initially but he was surprisingly persistent. So since he claimed to have a dinner appointment, I agreed as we would have to split before dinner. So we met at TCC at Velocity.

Farhan needed to wait for his wife to turn up so we sat around till about 7pm when she turned up. He then asked if he could come to my place to see a couple of textbooks. Strange request so it sparked a suspicion that something was brewing at home. I tried not to think too much about it otherwise I might spoil my own surprise. Ha.

When we came up on the lift to the 19th floor, there was a catered dinner outside the lift landing. There was no one around and my home door was closed. However, there was a stray slipper belonging to our neighbour outside our house. So there must be others in our house.

When the door opened, I was surprised! Not so much that there were people in the house waiting for me to get back but rather the number and breadth of my friends who where invited. It was rather overwhelming as they were friends who I have gone through significant activities together but due to work commmitments, have not met for quite some time.

There was a birthday sign hanging from the foyer beams and 4-5 streamers of stars at the door entrance. There was a cake with 3 candles with the number 30 made from wax at the top. There were so many people to speak but so little time.

The Lims
Yiyong and Jasmine (minus lucky)
Felix and Alicia
Andrew and Wan Ling
Fred and Lay Fang
Laurine
Karen and John
Vernon and Jocelyn
Desmond and Julie
Graeme and Shanren
Farhan and Haslina
Dehui
Ivan (minus Juan)
My family
Fran's family

It was a very good gathering. I did not have enough time to speak to everyone as much as I wanted to. The atmosphere was good and time all too short as soon friends had to go.

I have to thank my wife, Fran, for working so hard to make this all happen. To organise the dinner, getting my friend's contacts and arranging for them all to be here. Most difficult was to orchestrate my departure from home and making sure I got back when needed.

I do not have photos of my own but here are those taken for me...

My Big 30

Here is just a shot of me.