Birthday Surprise
Thursday, 2 June 2022 23:54![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elusivekYesterday was my bestie C's birthday. There's 3 of us, me (K), C, and P, that, hm... we're pretty much solid travel buddies and very good friends. Every year for each other's birthdays we try to do something special for each other. They did the crazy special Agnes b Dino cake one year that involved P taking me out for the day and apparently C had to do a mad dash round trip to Hong Kong just to get the cake back to Macau thing...
I did one thing one year when we were in Tokyo where I ordered a cake from a "night time bakery" in Shinjuku and then managed to "accidentally" (totally planned) walk past that bakery at around 10pm and then tell her "oh hey look at that nice cake!" and she was surprised to see a cake with her name on it - and it was hers.
So this year, for C's birthday, we were supposed to dine at a very high-class Chinese restaurant that is under my company. However, in the very last minute, she said her Mom's rich friend invited her family there as well for her birthday, and she asked if we could relocate to a steak house.
Okay.
I wanted to rib her a bit for "ditching us from the prestigious location" so I talked to the restaurant manager if he could kindly arrange for some "Chinese Peach Buns" (traditional birthday buns) for her meal with her Mom's friend and blah blah. I even thought of a funny message plate: all in Chinese, addresing C in her Chinese name, and the message was 人生經驗值UP (Life experience UP) (a very "modern" message) and 福如東海 壽比南山 (a traditionally very traditional phrase for old people birthdays) and signed off by P's and my Chinese names. They were indeed at first surprised that there was a plate of buns that they did not order, and C laughed when she saw the message plate. She knew our Chinese names all along. Totally even if you want to ditch us, we'd make you feel our spirits there with you LOL
And then for her actual birthday, she wanted steak. After much discussion we chose to go to a high-class steak house that was also under my company. The thing is... she wanted to eat meat. And we were going to a steak house, which is a very western concept... so... I got her a roasted suckling pig cake LOL. This is usually the first dish served in a Chinese banquet, be it a wedding banquet, a special birthday banquet, a baby's 100-day celebration banquet. Just as long as it's a Chinese banquet and the first thing served is a roasted suckling pig. Due to some stupid company policy, if we wanted to eat an "outside" cake, we HAD to order the cake from a particular cake shop... so I had no choice but to order from that specific cake shop. At first, I found it a tad expensive, but seeing the final product, it was very, very good. It looked like a suckling pig, the sugar paste was actually very thin... hm... seeing the final thing I realized it wasn't expensive at all. LOOK AT THE PIG'S BUTT!
The restaurant helped us slice the cake (we had 3 thin slices from the beautiful butt), we even made a joke to "skin the pig" because for a usual roasted suckling pig, you eat the skin first, it's supposed to be nice and crispy.
C was surprised a second time... LOL!
I don't know how our surprise and gimmick game will go next year. I don't know how to top my own ideas next year. Oh boy!
I did one thing one year when we were in Tokyo where I ordered a cake from a "night time bakery" in Shinjuku and then managed to "accidentally" (totally planned) walk past that bakery at around 10pm and then tell her "oh hey look at that nice cake!" and she was surprised to see a cake with her name on it - and it was hers.
So this year, for C's birthday, we were supposed to dine at a very high-class Chinese restaurant that is under my company. However, in the very last minute, she said her Mom's rich friend invited her family there as well for her birthday, and she asked if we could relocate to a steak house.
Okay.
I wanted to rib her a bit for "ditching us from the prestigious location" so I talked to the restaurant manager if he could kindly arrange for some "Chinese Peach Buns" (traditional birthday buns) for her meal with her Mom's friend and blah blah. I even thought of a funny message plate: all in Chinese, addresing C in her Chinese name, and the message was 人生經驗值UP (Life experience UP) (a very "modern" message) and 福如東海 壽比南山 (a traditionally very traditional phrase for old people birthdays) and signed off by P's and my Chinese names. They were indeed at first surprised that there was a plate of buns that they did not order, and C laughed when she saw the message plate. She knew our Chinese names all along. Totally even if you want to ditch us, we'd make you feel our spirits there with you LOL
And then for her actual birthday, she wanted steak. After much discussion we chose to go to a high-class steak house that was also under my company. The thing is... she wanted to eat meat. And we were going to a steak house, which is a very western concept... so... I got her a roasted suckling pig cake LOL. This is usually the first dish served in a Chinese banquet, be it a wedding banquet, a special birthday banquet, a baby's 100-day celebration banquet. Just as long as it's a Chinese banquet and the first thing served is a roasted suckling pig. Due to some stupid company policy, if we wanted to eat an "outside" cake, we HAD to order the cake from a particular cake shop... so I had no choice but to order from that specific cake shop. At first, I found it a tad expensive, but seeing the final product, it was very, very good. It looked like a suckling pig, the sugar paste was actually very thin... hm... seeing the final thing I realized it wasn't expensive at all. LOOK AT THE PIG'S BUTT!
The restaurant helped us slice the cake (we had 3 thin slices from the beautiful butt), we even made a joke to "skin the pig" because for a usual roasted suckling pig, you eat the skin first, it's supposed to be nice and crispy.
C was surprised a second time... LOL!
I don't know how our surprise and gimmick game will go next year. I don't know how to top my own ideas next year. Oh boy!
