February 11, 2008

• The Amazing Race - Irene's 25th Birthday Edition

  *** Warning - I know everyone's been waiting for the pictures... yeah well, this is going to be a long post, you could skip the boring background information parts and just go look at the funny pictures below

  I knew I wanted to do something special for Bunny's birthday, but I wasn't exactly sure what. A surprise party was out, since we had done that twice recently - Indu's birthday and my own. Drawing some inspiration from Irene's birthday celebration for Shawn - it was a treasure hunt spread over 3 days, I decided to work on something of a similar nature.

  Initially, I wanted to spread it out over a week. Her lunar birthday fell on the 4th of February, while the actual day was on 10th February, so I thought it would be amusing if I spread her birthday gifts to 7 people and gave her clues to meet them over 7 days. However, with Chinese New Year in between, it simply wasn't practical. I also considered giving her 25 gifts, 1 gift for each year of her life, but well, Kai had already done that for Anj recently and yet again it wasn't exactly practical. So I settled for 7 (2+5 = 7) Amazing Race Stations and started solicitating help from our friends to man the stations.

  I am extremely grateful that our friends were so willing to help. Given that it was on a Sunday and during the Chinese New Year period, I was sure that no one would entertain me. Therefore, I was really happy when almost everyone I approached was willing to help.

  In the meantime, while I was still in Taiwan, I began to stock up on the gifts I wanted to give her. I shopped with her in my mind, constantly stopping whenever I saw anything bunny related or remotely suitable for her and the style we were trying to develop for her. My efforts paid off when I was able to amass such a whole range of gifts that I had the option to pick what would go into each of the 7 birthday gifts.

  The next challange I had was to finalise the 7 stations and make clue cards for each station. I planned for the stations to be along the NEL MRT line so that it would be easy for her to move between stations. In addition, I made sure that the stations were at restaurants/cafes so that the station masters had a place to sit down and wait for her. Finally, the stations had to be places where we had been together, so I could give her clues that were personal and easy to figure out. I certainly didn't want her travelling to the wrong place and end up taking 10 hours to finish a race when it could be completed in 5 hours.

  Once I had the stations decided, I sent out the list in the email thread so our friends could pick which station they wanted to be at. This turned out to be fairly amusing as couples wanted to stay together and some stations were deemed more interesting than others since there was ice-cream/food/shopping to be enjoyed... Fortunately, everyone picked a station and we started on what tasks she could do at each station in order to earn her gift and clue. This was where everyone started giving helpful suggestions, and I began to see who the really evil people were - Shariene and her polo mints necklace, Manqin and her bunny tail, Lisa and her pushups/singing to mannequins,
  Halimah and her 101 mad ideas.

  By the time I returned to Singapore, I had a fairly extensive list of the people involved and the tasks that were to be done. That meant I only needed to wrap the gifts, design the clue cards, get them printed and pass everything to the station masters. Easy cheesy right? Actually, this turned out to be fairly challenging since Irene was at my place so often over the next few days that I couldn't get much done. In the end, I had to resort to wrapping her gifts in the short periods of times when I wasn't out visiting people for CNY and she wasn't at my place. The result was rather slipshot wrapping of the gifts which was not up to my usual prissy perfectionist standards - Sorry Bunny   I also didn't have time to get the clues done until Friday night when we were playing mahjong and Dion, my godbrother, took over my game for me so I could spend some time on my laptop.

  Anyway, as we drew closer to the date, I began to give her an imaginary plan of what we were going to do for her birthday. I wanted to make sure she was free for the entire day and I told her that she should come over on Saturday night so I could be the first to wish her happy birthday. We could spend Sunday at home, watching DVDs and enjoying some quality time together. She agreed and the evil twin within me laughed her ass off while thinking about how surprised she was going to be.

  Saturday morning came and with 24 hours to go, I still hadn't finished wrapping the gifts or printing the clues. To add to that, I needed to buy groceries in preparation to cook dinner for everyone and I had to get her balloons, bunny ears (which I couldn't find in the end), print her a t-shirt to wear during the race, prepare her birthday scrapbook and buy the ezlink card so I could personalise it. On top of all that, Irene was STILL AT MY HOUSE at 12 noon and I had to meet everyone at 3 pm. *PANIC*

  I was supposed to go to my uncle's for CNY lunch and so I got ready and left the house together with her. She kept insisting I get on a cab immediately, but I managed to convince her to get on the bus to go to the gym first. Once she was safely on the bus, I dashed off to get the clues printed. Unfortunately, all the photo development places at my neighbourhood were closed for CNY, so I rushed home to finish wrapping all the gifts, packed them properly and headed to Plaza Singapura. Once there, I sent the clues for printing and sat down at TCC to wait for everyone to get there. Very grateful to Indu, Badriah, Alina, Chris, Jean and Edna for meeting me that day and picking up the clues and gifts from me. Also a huge thank you to Edna who accompanied me for shopping after that. We literally walked the whole of Plaza Sing in search of a T-shirt I could use for her "Kiss Me - It's My Birthday" T-shirt, walked to Centrepoint to order the balloons, raided Carrefour for food to cook and lugged everything home in time for me to marinate the meats, hide the salads and camouflage everything else in the fridge. For the whole of Saturday night, I was worried Irene would want to raid the fridge for food and she would see the whole chicken I had bought, the mountains of salad greens and the tupperware of meats I had marinating. Fortunately, I managed to distract her by constantly feeding her with food that was outside of the fridge.

  Sunday morning, we got up fairly early and I cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast. I made a show of telling her we could catch a movie in the afternoon and even checked up on the movie timings. We didn't book the movie though, cos I told her I had some movie vouchers and we should just go to the theatre directly to get the tickets. Of course, she didn't know we were not even going to leave the house together, much less catch a movie. We took a nap after breakfast and woke up at around 1 pm. Knowing that Halimah would be arriving by 2 pm, I got up, told her we were going for dim sum lunch and started getting ready to go. As luck would have it, I managed to convince her to put on her contacts, do her make up and let me do her hair before she was ready to leave the house.

  She stepped out of the house and was greeted by a chirpy Halimah who said "Let's go! I'm going with you!", points to me and remarks "Oh yeah, she's not going!"  R O F L! The look on Irene's face was truly priceless! We took a quick picture and I quickly confiscated her wallet and bag. In return, I handed her the Introduction to the race, her birthday T-shirt and a bag with her first clue plus a bottle of water. And she was off, on her very own personal amazing race

  
  Before the start of The Amazing Race

  
  Inspecting her personalised EZlink card

  
  Reading the game introduction card

  
  "KISS ME! It's my birthday"

  
  All changed and ready to go to her first station

  
  Edna and Jessica were waiting in Ben & Jerry's

  
  First task - Eating ice-cream out of a sock

  
  Sock all clear! Task 1 Completed!

  
  Bonus gift - Balloons Bouquet!

  
  Unwrapping the 1st gift

  
  Gift number 1 - Black leather sling bag for her to carry around all her books, files and other barang barang

  
  Receiving her next clue from Edna and Jessica

  
  Clue Two is so easy right?

  
  Setting off from Ben & Jerry's

  
  Arrival at PLAY and Tuckshop next door which was closed.

  
  Peifen, Vonny, Irene and Badriah at Chinatown Point, where Irene was given her 2nd task - Get a hug from 5 people

  
  Person 1

  
  Person 2

  
  Person 3
  (Persons 4 & 5 declined to be photographed) - Task 2 completed!

  
  Gift number 2 - A sleek black and silver tie, a must have for every stylish dyke
   
  
  And Irene gets clue number 3...

  
  Getting a drink while waiting for the bus

  
  Finding Indu outside of A Zhang which was ALSO closed
  

  
  

  
  The traumatised lady whom Irene serenaded on the streets to complete her 3rd task

  
  Gift number 3 - Bright orange CK boy shorts undies, for the gay boy in her

  
  Getting her next clue from Indu

  
  And she knows exactly where to go

  
  The gang welcomes her and feeds her before she sets out on her next task.

  
  Chris, Irene and Gerald before she is given her next task

  
  All she has to do is to take a picture with the 4WD

  
  And she manages to get a pretty lady to do it for her... Task 4 completed!

  
  Gift number 4 - Funky black and silver shoes, for the nights when we go dancing

  
  Clue five and she knows where she is headed

  
  Chris, Badriah, Peifen, Vonny and Gerald saying "Bye" to Irene

  
  Irene arrives at Mr Bean and discovers no one is there!

  
  She smses me for help and I find out that Cheyenne and Manqin are at the WRONG PLACE! LOL!

  
  Cheyenne and Manqin, panting after a quick dash to Mr Bean

  
  How come Irene looks like she is the station master here?

  
  Cheyenne, Irene and Manqin before the beginning of task 5 - Getting 5 ladies in red to pet her bunny tail

  
  Pin the tail on the (happy?) bunny!

  
  So adorable!

  
  Can't resist touching her own tail

  
  1st Lady...

  
  2nd lady..

  
  3rd Lady...

  
  4th & 5th Ladies... Task 5 completed!

  
  Cheyenne unable to keep her paws off my bunny!

  
  Irene's gift from Cheyenne and Manqin - A choker with a classy pendant

  
  Gift number 5 - More sports gear for my Playgym Bunny

  
  Bunny doesn't look entirely sure if she knows where the next station is

  
  She gets there and spends some time looking for the station masters

  
  When they are actually just sitting there behind her!

  
  Lisa, Irene and Alina, before the start of her final task - Singing in the Sim Lim Square Food Court

  
  Denying responsibility for the mess that they made

  
  Holding her own bunny concert in the middle of Sim Lim Square Food Court

   
  Seranading the poor traumatised Indian man - No dear, I don't think he is a gay boy so you shouldn't look at him so longingly

  
  Gift number 6 - Socks, so she won't keep wearing the ones that have her toes peeking out...

  
  Task completed! Quick snap before heading for the final stop...

  
  Clue number 7 and Irene looks relieved to know its the final stop.

  
  Finally arriving right back where she started after a ride in Lisa's car where they almost got lost?

  
  Food waiting for her to arrive before we all dig in. Menu for tonight was herbal chicken soup, pasta with twin sauces, fresh garden salad, cocktail sausages with cherry tomatoes, shrimp fried rice and handmade spring rolls.

  
  And after food, we have dessert! 2 cakes because there were so many people...

  
  Finally, a decent picture of us together.

  
  Great Group Photo A

  
  Great Group Photo B

  All in all, it turned out to be great! Even the people who couldn't make the stations turned up for dinner. I am especially grateful that everyone kept the secret and helped make it extra uber duper super fun for Irene. Once again, thank you everyone! I couldn't have done it without you!

  As for the 7th gift... I'm not going to blog about it, but you can read Irene's blog to find out more

  Happy Birthday my Amazing Bunny...

  I love you...

  
  

  • 1:38 am
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