A special Fedex delivery

So have you ever spotted a friend walking towards you and made a mad dash for the bushes before you could be spotted?

Thanks to this girl, Viv, Pizzadude, Pizzadude's flatmate and I had to resort to the undignified act described above.

But I'm getting ahead of the story as usual. Let's start right from the very beginning.

Birthdays are days when some of your wishes get fulfilled. Now the girl has been wishing for Federer ever since we can remember. So we figured he had to be a part of her birthday surprise this year. Thus started the mad googling and finally I found exactly what I she was looking for. More on that later in the post.

As I like to say, a true surprise is one that is preceded by a decoy. For the decoy, Pizzadude had a super idea. He suggested using a semi-clad SRK poster that he had wanted to gift me sometime and got a shocked "Are you kidding me?? Noooooooo!" reaction from me. Much as I love SRK, I prefer him fully clad, thank you very much. But this was the perfect chance to use the poster because of Shub's special relationship with SRK. Let's just say she loves him as much as I love... errr... teddy bears (BLEAH!). So we decided to sneak into her house while she was away and decorate her room with the SRK poster and balloons as the clock struck midnight to usher in her birthday.

The night before her birthday, Pizzadude, Viv and I met for dinner, and bought the stuff needed for the surprise. We hung around at Pizzadude's place till about 11 pm or so. Shub's flatmates were in the plot too, and were going to take her for a long walk so we had enough time to do the damage. We finally received the message that they had left home and took a bus down to her place.

"Hope we don't bump into her when we get there, man!" I said.

"Don't worry", assured Pizzadude. "This bus goes to the bus stop on the opposite side of where she's going. There is simply no way we will bump into her."

So we get into the bus, alight at the bus-stop and the next thing I hear is a mad scramble. "Isn't that her??? Walking towards us????" I didn't even pause to see who had said that or whether it really was her. All I remember is the four of us making a mad dash for the bushes. "Don't limp, Pizzadude! She'll know it's you!" Viv cried out as we scrammed. (Pizzadude is still recovering from his knee surgery and still has a slight limp.) I wanted to laugh so hard when he said that, but there really was no time, the girl was at our heels!

So we ran through the bushes and hid behind a van, and only after we saw her walk past, did we get out. We took an alternate route to her place and actually kinda got lost. But finally we got there and quickly got to work.

The SRK poster was stuck on the bed using cellotape, and to create the 'come hither' feel, we placed post-it notes with speech bubbles and thought bubbles all over. Now I shall not say where the post-its were placed and what text they contained, but let's just say someone took full revenge for the airport embarrassment episode. We placed balloons around the poster as well to make it as cheesy as possible.

Check it out!

















The initial plan was to switch off the lights and hide in her room till she got back.

"But what if she doesn't come in here, but hangs around in the living room instead?" I asked.

To avoid this possibility and lead her to her room as soon as she got home, Pizzadude and I decided to make tiny footprints using post-its leading to her room. Viv even suggested we mislead her by making the footprints go up the wall and perhaps even the ceiling! :P






















The tiny footprints

Once the footprints were done, we switched off the lights in her room and hid behind the door. One of her flatmates got the cake and we quickly lit the candles when we heard her unlock the door. She did take the longest time to come in, and the candles were kind of half-melted, but she was there and boy, was she surprised to see all of us!

Pizzadude had made sure he had got along the ghastly garland he'd been made to wear at the airport. Shub was made to wear that AND a silly party hat when she cut the cake. Her flatmates had planned an elaborate treasure hunt for her, involving clues in the freezer and flowerpot and what not, and finally she hunted down the gift from them – a shopping voucher for Vivocity – a mall I refer to as my mother ship.

We, the non-flatmates group, also got our gifts out. Pizzadude got her a skincare gift pack from The Body Shop. Viv and I had got her a peach-coloured running t-shirt and shorts set for her marathon training, and a set of jewellery to match the birthday dress she was raving about here.

Around 1 am or so, Viv and I left for home, leaving behind the happy birthday girl who was under the impression that her birthday surprise was over.

But the real surprise was yet to happen. The next morning. At her office no less.

The next morning, as I was on my way to work, I got an excited sms from Pizzadude, "OMG did you read Shub's blog?" I was in the bus so I hadn't. "What? What? What??" I asked. Apparently she had blogged about how she wanted Federer for her birthday. "She's gonna freak out when she sees our office surprise!" Pizzadude wrote gleefully.

And this was the 'office surprise' - I had designed a card using Photoshop, featuring Federer and Shub in kind of a compromising position, and we had decided to plant it at her office cubicle along with a nausea-inducing lovey-dovey teddy bear (BLEAH!) - gifts seemingly from Federer himself. On the envelope, were the words 'A special FEDEX delivery'. At first, we wanted to get a bunch of flowers that screamed "LUURRRRVE!" (in capital letters, no less) but wondering if the 'flowers from Federer' would stay fresh till the next morning, we decided to replace them with the teddy bear (did I mention BLEAH?). The stuff had been passed to Pizzadude's flatmate who is Shub's colleague. He was going to discreetly plant the stuff at her cubicle.

I'd put together the cheesiest lines with all kinds of tennis terms for the card. Viv also added on and finally this is what was on the inside of the card:

My darling, my 'smashing' Shub,

I can't keep this secret to myself anymore - I have reached the 'break point'. You are my 'one-love' who has cast a 'net' over my heart. My 'single' self yearns to play 'mixed doubles' with you. Think of the ‘advantage’! ;)

I will 'court' you forever and will always remain at your 'service'. I hope you will accept me, with all my ‘faults’. In this 'game' of love, my heart is 'set' on you. Trust me, we will be a perfect 'match'!

Yours forever,
Roger
PS: I hope my ‘back-handed’ methods did not create a 'racquet' at your workplace.

And that was why the three of us couldn't wait to hear from her after she'd discovered the real surprise. We waited restlessly till about noon for her messages/calls abusing us, but there was nothing. We tried to get a status update from her colleague, and apparently, she had been trying to figure out who sent her the stuff and had been furiously asking around. And her whole office, including her boss, had been very entertained with the Fedex drama at her cubicle. Someone even made a colour photocopy of the card and gave it to the boss!

Finally, around lunch-time, I received the sms from her.

"Was that YOU?! The teddy bear and card on my desk?! I want the truth or prepare to die!"

Whoa. Intense. Prepare to die and all.

So I coolly replied, "Huh? What? What are you creating a 'racquet' for??"

Well, let's just say there was a long string of back and forth messages after that, where she called me everything from a dhakkan to a brilliant genius to plain mad. Later, my fellow conspirators also joined us for a great dinner she hosted at Pizzeria Chijmes where we told her of all the details that had gone into our planning, and she told us details of the racquet, errr.. I mean racket at her office.

Of course, by now you're probably dying to see the actual picture on the card.

I'd do it, but there's one small technical problem. So we have to work out an alternative solution.

Observe the picture below. Now imagine Shub's face instead of the trophy. I'm afraid that's all you'll get. For the safety of my life, I'm afraid I can't post the actual picture of my friend in the compromising fictional position we had put her in.

You see, this is a family bar. We do not host the... ahem... 'French Open'.