A warm reception

Shub and I have been told on numerous occasions that we look (and behave, especially if under the influence of mango margarita) like twins. You know how some people have evil twins? In our case, however, we are both evil. You can say that we are each other's evil twins. It only depends on who is more evil in a particular situation.

And in this particular situation - also known as our friend Pizzadude returning to Singapore after a month in India - she went up a notch higher on the evil-o-meter.

"Hey, Pizzadude is coming back to Singapore on Saturday morning. Shall we go and embarrass him at the airport?" She said to me during duty at the restaurant last saturday.

"Of course!" I jumped. Of course, jumping while you're in a sari is not advisable - not only does a jumping waitress present an un-elegant picture, it is also a highly dangerous activity for your general well-being and sense of balance. This particular jump was executed by a trained expert and should not, under any circumstances, be attempted at home.

"All right, let's do it! We'll make a banner, and possibly a garland!"

"A garland! I LOVE the idea!"

We were so excited by the idea we were not bothered by the fact that we would have to get up at 6 am on a Saturday to execute the plan. She roped in his flatmates and I roped in Viv. Yesterday, I created a draft on Word with the text for the banner "WHERE IS THE PIZZA, DUDE?" in font size 120, bold, red, and sent it to Shub. I'd also added a picture of a pizza just in case. She said she could not view the word "is" (it was a .docx document) but said she'd print it and do up a collage.

Incidentally, Shub lives in a part of Singapore which is also known as Malaysia by some (ahem!) and so we decided she should come over to my place the night before and we could all leave for the airport together in the morning. Travelling from Malaysia to Singapore can take quite some time, and by the time she got to my place, I was already in dreamland. Viv and she put together the collage which I saw only when I woke up this morning.
It said "WHERE IZ THE [picture of pizza] DUDE?" Now usually I try not to put my editor self to work outside work, but my first reaction to the "IZ" was "What the...?!" She explained later that because there was no "is" they had decided to take the "IZ" from the word "PIZZA" since they had used the picture of the pizza instead of the word. Also, the question mark had also gone missing from the document so they used the "P" of the pizza and whatever remaining letters to make a "question mark".

One of Pizzadude's flatmates backed out at the last minute. I'm sure he thought the drama at the airport could get more embarrassing for the embarrasors than the embarrasee. The other turned up just in time, armed with what can only be referred to as The Ghastliest Garland In The World. It had fake plastic flowers of more colours than you could count, and was plain BLEARGH. Yup, that's the word. We were delighted with it!

So Pizzadude comes out of his gate and screeches to a halt. We are holding the banner high up, ignoring the pointing and staring by the people in the airport. His jaw falls and eyes pop out. "Oh my god!!!!" He says. He looks at the banner, then at Shub, Viv, his flatmate and me, and then at the banner again.

"We came to embarrass you." We admit.

Well, he is embarrassed all right. He takes a while to calm his senses and find his words.

"Thank god you didn't get like a garland or something." He says finally.

We burst out laughing as Viv takes the garland out.

Pizzadude cannot believe his eyes. "Oh noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" He goes.

His protests are ignored and he is duly garlanded. More people turn and stare at this bunch of loony-bins.

He immediately takes the garland off and we go, "Oh no no no! Put it back put it back! We have to take pictures!"

"There are pictures?" By now you can actually feel the bloke's agony. You can even see the thought bubble floating above his head with a playlist - "Dost dost na raha..." followed by "Dushman na karey dost ne woh kaam kiya hai..."

So his flatmate places the camera on the ledge near the waterfall, puts it on timer, we garland the guy again, hold up the banner and smile. More staring. The flatmate is also evil, as he has put the timer on the maximum time possible so we look totally silly holding up all the stuff and grinning for the longest time at apparently nobody. The first shot is not that great, so we do the whole routine again - TWICE! Kudos to Pizzadude for taking it in such good spirit. Bhagwaan hum jaise dost kisi ko na de.

Fortunately, Shub had bought him a slice of cheesecake to sweeten the blow. Later, as we helped ourselves to all the goodies he had got for us (and still shared with us, in spite of what we had done to him), we decided that this had been a major success and that we should probably start a business on this. This is the business plan: we embarrass your friends by receiving them at the airport with moronic banners and you pay us for it. Agarbatti, teeka and ghanti are thrown in for free but there's a 5-dollar extra charge for the garland. Ten more if you want the show to include singing. Clients can choose from our extensive and exhaustive playlist of "Aao huzoor tumko" and "Aaiye meherbaan". You can also avail of our extra services - photography and video-recording of the 'spectacle'. And finally, 10 dollars more if you want the whole thing to go up on Youtube for further embarrassment of your (ex?)friend. Finally, the special services of our truly global company include having our "overseas partners" to "receive" your friends in a similar manner, no matter where your friends fly to escape from you.

As for Pizzadude, well, he has sworn off flying.

We are all still friends though.

Errr... I think.