Birthday Presents!

How special do I feel?

I woke up this morning and found three text messages on my phone, with one extremely sweet one from my brother that just made me go "awwww"and another from Maya whom days before had sent me this gorgeous bright orange traditional Malay scarf.

Then as I left to go to work, I found a package just against my door frame. Being late for work, I simply hurriedly grabbed the package and hastily took off.

Arrived at work and struggled with the package, considering Letrica had taped ALL AROUND the entire thing which made it impossible to rip anything apart. Ended up having to use a scissors and extreme force before it revealed...a Terry Pratchett book! And then, as if that wasn't enough, she turned up in my office with another big box, saying that my real present was in it.

She had made me a bright orange blanket (see picture above)! Yup, crocheted with her own two hands. In bright orange. It was lovely. And warm, and made me feel oh so special.

Then my boss turns up in front of my office singing Happy Birthday, and hurriedly shooed me off as we were both going to a seminar in the city.

After the seminar, we ended up meeting the rest of my department in a Japanese restaurant in Hornsby where they gave me TWO MORE Pratchett books (anybody guessed I'm a Pratchett fan yet?). As well as some lovely sushi. And two wonderful scoops of gelati (mmm...gelati...mmm).

I get back to work and suddenly I'm getting birthday wishes from everybody in the office. Which was really cool. Got a few birthday cards too. And then Sophia walks into my office sheepishly declaring that she had forgotten my birthday and swore she will do something with me some time soon (I believe it was more of a promise than a threat).

And then reading all these lovely birthday wishes from the blogging community, emails from my friends in Singapore and England and my dear mother, (whom without her, my birthday would never have happened) and then random text messages on my phone throughout the afternoon! Honestly, I feel so thoroughly spoilt and special!

So anyway, after settling into work, (well, kind of. It was really hard to concentrate when my ego was getting so inflated!) Sophia came into my office again holding a huge bouquet of flowers. The silly girl felt so bad about missing my birthday she tried to make up for it with the flowers. Well, I have to say, it certainly worked! They were lovely orange roses, lillies and yellow everlastings.

Mae turned up later just after work, which was really special considering she had just worked night duty yesterday and and had to do more tonight and would normally have been still asleep at this time of the evening. Turned out that Letrica had called her to come for a birthday dinner she had organised.

The birthday dinner was simply fantastic. Kristin, Letrica, Leighton, Daniel, Mark, Mae and Leah went and had lovely Thai food and then drove off to St Ives from some more gelati, which proved to be absolutely decadant and oh so good.

It's almost 10pm now and I have just returned from the night out. It has been a real nice day, with good friends and great laughs and can I say this again?

Oh I feel so special.

Thank you, my friends.