50th birthday

i turned 50 on 17 dec.

and i had so many people celebrating it for me. a week before, my colleagues (whom i was very close to) organised a bbq at the beach. it was fun max as families came along, and we simply ate and drink ourselves stupid.

secondly my staff (who now reports to another person) wanted to surprise me with a birthday cake, but i found out... epic failure one of them said. hahaha... but the birthday celebration in office turned out a little more politically sensitive that expected. you see, my merged department has this practice where every month, one colleague will organise a birthday celebration for everyone bored in that month. in december, it so happened that another girl (from the other airline that we merged with) was born on the same day as me - 17 dec. and it so happened that the one who was supposed to organise the dec birthday had left and no one took over this task.

and what happened was, for my birthday, my ex-staff organised a birthday party for me. and she invited people i was close to to celebrate the cake cutting together. and as i was very close to many people from my side of the airline, almost all departments from my side was represented. and in my department didn't take too well to the fact that people from across all departments came and celebrate my birthday but no one arranged for a celebration of the other colleague who had the same birthdate at me in my department. and to make it up to her, my reporting manager tasked my ex-staff to organise an impromptu celebration for her immediately after mine. and for this department celebration, i was left out. i was actually rather ok by this arrangement until one girl in the department said, during the phototaking, that "hey, we should get jeffrey to also hold the birthday cake and take a department photo". everyone felt superbly awkward...

ok, didn't know if i made sense in the para above. but yeah... when midnight struck, my department head (who had not spoken to me since the merger) send this girl birthday greetings but not to me. and i suspected some others in the department noticed the differences in the treatment and chose to send personal birthday wishes to me instead. but it didn't bother me. in fact, i couldn't care. nonetheless, people read a lot into this disparity in my department head's behaviour and it ended up once again in an awkward "me vs the rest of the department" kinda outcome. anyway, i just ignored the whole affair.

and last but not least, a few close colleagues organised a hong kong trip to celebrate my birthday. 

best birthday celebrations of my life.

:-)