Birthday Mooncake and Prosecco

Last Monday, my team gathered in the small pantry to throw a fake surprise birthday celebration for YM.

Why fake? It was Guohao’s crazy idea. Yanming’s birthday is tomorrow but he’s on leave then, so he said we’d give him a surprise cake the day before that. But so that he won’t expect it, we’ll pretend that the mooncake, which Guohao had bought for another reason, is his surprise already.

I know. It’s like a double agent spy plot or something. Inception. Confusion.

Anyway, we did manage to surprise Yanming that day, which is what counts. Look at how happy he looks with his birthday mooncake. He even closed his eyes and made a serious wish before blowing out the candle! The poor unsuspecting soul.

 

We cut the small cake into 8 pieces. Our Dublin-based director Sam happened to be in town and he had never tasted durian before, that’s why Guohao had gone and bought the durian flavored mooncake so he could try it.

For those who don’t know what durian is, it’s a very stinky fruit. Some people love it, some don’t. I’m in the latter camp.

Sam took his piece and took a whiff of it – wrong move.

Still, he bravely put the piece in his mouth and ate it. “It’s not so bad,” he said. “It doesn’t taste the way it smells.” Congrats, Sam! You’ve finally tasted durian and survived to tell the tale! ;P

 

Then today we prepared the real surprise.

We asked a lady from HR, who happens to be sitting near us, to call Yanming and pretend to need to discuss an HR matter with him.

Meanwhile we camped out in the pantry and set up his cake. Halfway through lighting the candles, however, he walked by the pantry and spotted us. Oops.

We sang the birthday song before cutting the cake and breaking out the Prosecco wine and pouring it into wine glasses which I found in the cupboard.

Guohao’s double-surprise idea: success!