Naruto Shippuuden

The very first to greet me a happy birthday was my colleague Abie, she greeted me at past 12 midnight. We had exchanged couple of text messages, saying that she’s still up and waiting until the clock ticks off to 12 so she could greet me. The greetings starts coming in but I opted to read all of them and went off to bed. The next morning, my inbox was flooded of text messages and few miscalls from friends and relatives. On my way to the office I’ve received few text messages and again miscalls from colleagues. It’s been a habit among the “geek squad” (we fondly addressed our circle of friends) that every time there’s a birthday celebrant, we need to have lunch together. Tere informed me that we’ll be having lunch at “Ai Sarap” – just across ABS and which Ai-Ai delas Alas owns but I told her that I don’t feel like having lunch there because it was too smoky and it stinks (oops, sorry Aiai). And so they moved to Pixies which is also just across the building.
It was a normal day for me; I came in the office around 12 in the afternoon and went straight to the adoration chapel of the 13th floor of the ELJ to hear mass, not because it’s my birthday but I’ve been attending mass almost everyday at lunchtime. After the mass, I headed straight to the location where the geek squad is all waiting for my entrance. On my way to Pixies, I bumped off with Cris – a barista from Starbucks, greeted me and said that they have been waiting for me and they have something for me. The rain starts to fall, lucky me because I was already on the place when it started raining hard. So there, we had lunch, talked, photo ops and even this Q&A portion where they asked me what is my birthday wish which I humbly answered “Good health and world peace!” – sounds familiar right? Everyone laughs and thought that I’m crazy and I was just kidding but I mean that. Then here comes the birthday cake, a mouth-watering caramel-flavored cake filled with icing laid-in spiral effects. But oops! There’s no candle! Taddah! If on Myrish’s birthday, (which also had no candle) we used the one from Glady’s birthday cake this time our last resort are the “toothpicks” – at least three of them, light it up and poof, a substitute candle in an instant. After having sweets we headed to Starbucks to have some coffee, and there, Chris handed me a gift sophisticatedly wrapped. It was a green checkered scarf – coolness! While having coffee, She asked me about my plans, my love life, etc. She gave me tips on how to make a relationship successful which Tiny and Kat eagerly memorized while Myrish claims to have virgin ears. After spending my lunch with the “geek squad” the surprises from my co-workers commence. There was a big “Happy Birthday” streamer on my cubicle. My place is on the passageway so everyone that will pass on my place would definitely see that pink streamer. Not to mention that my place can be seen over the glass window and is just adjacent to our Legal Department that everyone that will pass couldn’t help but notice the streamer. Oh my God, forget about the pink color, it’s the thought that counts and the fact that – “that” streamer seems to be the streamer for all the birthday celebrants then there shouldn’t be any issue. The very moment that I sat on my table, the receptionist handed me a rolled-in paper with notes inside. It’s actually a two-leaf paper; the first page contains an inspirational message about friendship then the second one contains an initial – honestly, I don’t get it at first and have no idea at all. Few more accomplices came in, the DHL guy who handed me a package addressed to me. I noticed though that I, being the addressee could be a mistake because when read the reference pick-up point, it should be addressed to my colleague Cindy who handles that account but then they insisted that it was for me. So I opened the package and just realized that it was part of the surprise. Another batch of boxes were handed to me by my colleagues Cindy, Ice and Abie, all of which contains gifts and sometime just a plain jokes like a can of sardines, a jumbo pen, etc. (they have actually stolen some of my items and wrapped it up in a box – effortless aren’t they). So to continue, I received few calls from another floor, a guard ringed my to greet me, all part of their plan. The other caller goes like this: “Hi Sir Hethler, Derek here, happy birthday, bye!” After the call, I said it was obvious that it’s scripted because Derek doesn’t even pause, he doesn’t even have any expression, but nevertheless it was fun. But these freaks me out, I have an on-going project, an AVP which was used on our GLT for this quarter, we still have some curing to do so we have to keep in touch with the IPost’ team for the editing and some audio engineer for the music scoring. Almost at the same time, I received emails from both parties. The subject of both emails contains: “Denial of Memo” for the retention that I’ve been asking from their group. And I shouted oh my God! This can’t be. But upon opening the email it seems that it was a joke and definitely part of the surprise – it was actually a birthday-greeting email. Then the receptionist once again handed me a paper note – and so it seems that it’s a puzzle that I have to figure out. I received more calls, email from HRD and mysterious gifts from the boxes. I thought it’s over so we had our snack, my treats to my teams – just pizza’s and chicken wings. When I thought that I could finally work as in “work” a couple of notes was handed to me; and calls from neighboring departments. When my colleague returned from Star Cinema, she handed me a movie passes from Joyce – our middleman from Star Cinema. It was around 100pcs. and I was surprised because she would normally give me a maximum of 10 movie passes. Guess I am wrong, when I thought that we’re starting to be serious, Cindy asked me to looked for the movie title that’s printed on the movie passes – holy crap, it’s “Caregiver”. Are you kidding me, I could give those passes to my friends and relatives so they could watch but for Pete’s sake, the movie isn’t showing anymore. So I called up Joyce, “Joyce!!! What’s with the movie passes? The hell!!!” and she keeps laughing out loud on the other line. Seriously, are you kidding me, giving out 100pcs. of movie passes. Moving on, I guess it was around 6:30 in the evening when the receptionist handed me the last batch of notes. He’s mum who’s the sender of those notes and claims that it was just turned-over to him by the last receptionist on duty. I’m writing down all the initials and it seems lacking of two more so I asked the guy if there’s more, he could just handed it all to me so he won’t get tired anymore going back and forth but he said there’s nothing left. There’s a corresponding initial of every message, but as I’ve said it seems lacking of two more so I just tried doing the wordplay – the text message way. Then the kryptonian message reads as: “H-P-Y—B-D-A-Y—HETH”. Well, I’m not sure of the exact message but I guess it reads that way. So when I thought that everything is over, once again they pulled me off from my chair for the ultimate surprise. We headed outside from our workstation then went to the Legal side of the building for the ultimate surprise. When we reached there, there’s a big as in huge box with bells and garland all over (is it Christmas yet?), I thought somebody was in there. Since my focus was on that box, the moment I look up straight, a dear friend waits on what we called “aquarium”, Patricia (or Tricia or Anne or Teacher or Trish) was in there waiting for me. And so we hugged each other, we missed each other, she’s a former colleague from Global but we managed to keep our friendship even if she’s not with us anymore. She actually cried after our reunion and complained how come I didn’t even shed a tear. I never expected that – that my teammates would arrange that for me. They know how much Tricia means to me and that really surprised me. Later on, Ice – the master of all this happening blurted it out that they’re trying to get a video message from Anne Curtis or Angel Locsin last Sunday but both didn’t show up on ASAP. She also revealed that to sum it up, there are 25 surprises all-in-all. The first, I totally can’t remember and the 25th was of course with Tricia. And again, when I thought that everything was over, a bonus came in, Rocky (Rocky-pedia) – our group’s very own “Wikipedia” and an ex-colleague shows up. It was a 10-minute reunion, of course the conversation won’t end without talking about anime specially Naruto. I am very happy that the geek squad was all here on my birthday. Rocky then had a very short yet powerful message to me on how I feel about the group and he said: “You are really blessed.”

Special shout out goes to my teammates Ice; Abie and Cindy and to Ahmira and Karen.

I will post the post-birthday celebration with my family, later. I’ve been living alone here in the metro and we’ll have a simple lunch over the weekend when I get back in Batangas.

For the Birthday photos head over to:
http://hethlerized.multiply.com/photos/album/10/My_18th_7_25th_Birthday

Visit my YouTube channel or my Multiply page for the videos:
http://www.youtube.com/hethler