Happy Birthday Kenny!

As the title of this post suggests, this is about the Fr3ech man himself - Kenny Voon Yung Shen. Let's get down to it.

We've been organizing this one for the good part of two weeks, but by some stupid lack of foresight on my end most of the organization fell on poor Wen Qi's shoulders ... (coughcough i was working on wordpress, okay? ) Anyway, she deserves full credit for being the matriarch and the organizer of what can be called the First Gathering Kenny Enjoyed. No kidding.

The plan was like this: supporting cast enters stage left at 11.00. Female cast members enter at 11:45. Main character walks into coffee bean and supporting cast yell "Happy Birthday Kenny!", taking him by surprise and making him smile with obvious delight at the ingenuity and loyalty of his friends. Spends time eating cake, drinking coffee and talking. Everyone leaves at about 1 pm, with happy memories and fat (what with all the whipped cream and sugar and chocolate, goodness).

Get real.

Here's what actually happened:

I was supposed to reach there at 11, but my sister had school at Kuching High. This complicated matters, a bit. At exactly 12:43 the night before Ben smsed me and we realized there was no cake. Uh-oh. So Ben said he'd buy one at Tun Jugah just before we met up at Coffee Bean.

Stage Hitch #1:
Ben calls supporting cast (read: me).

Ben: I went to the only bakery at Tun Jugah, ah, and they said the cake will only be ready by 3.
Me: Heh? How lerr? Where are you now?
Ben: Tun Jugah. You?
Me: On the way. Tell you what. We meet up at Tun Jugah and then discuss what to do there.

Phone conversations ends. The two supporting characters in the car (me and Paul) start discussing options. In the end we stormed a bakery, got a chocolate cake, and stormed right back out. Crisis solved with quick thinking, wallet emptying and my driving mom.

Paul and i entered Coffee Bean, happily carrying our prize - the cake box. Wen Qi, Ravin and Ben were there. We moved to a comfy corner near stage right (better theatrical ambience) sat down and started stuffing photos into the album. Ravin and Ben left to buy a shirt for Kenny. Nicole, Samantha enter scene.

Stage Hitch #2
Kenny enters. In a textbook case of panic mouth-move-faster-than-brain, we chased him out. "Leave! Go away! You're not supposed to be here!"

He does so and vanishes into the dark bowels of Sarawak Plaza.

Nicole: "Did we just do that?"

Uhhuh. Right. :S

Zhe Rong, Vivian and Garrick enters scene. Girls buy drinks. We scribble as fast as we can on his present. Sam makes a comment on how thrigger happy we all are. The cameras are flashing everywhere. The tension builds up ....

Minor Stage Hiccup #3
Ben and Ravin rush onto the stage in an extremely flustered mood!

"QUICK QUICK! HE'S COMING! I SAW HIM OUTSIDE!"

We stared at them blankly. "I know. He came in just now and we chased him out."

"Oh." Then - "Quick! SIGN SIGN SIGN SIGN!"

I call Kenny to enter stage right.

He enters. After a whole lot of "Hello"s and "Happy Birthday!"s the boys buy drinks. We chat, we snapped pictures. I tested a little of Sam's drink and a little of Nickki's drink (sorry girls!). A moment of "Err - what do we do now arr?".

"Eat the cake!" I said, and we opened the box.

Minor Stage Hiccup #4
No lighter. This seemed relatively small, since candles were not a must for birthdays ... i think. Hey, coming of age ceremonies in certain parts of the Savannah required the birthday boy or girl to fast for a day and then sit still as ants are poured over them! And they had to be dressed in a loincloth! Okay, so that was how i remembered it, in a encyclopedia ... somewhere. And even if we had a matchbox, this leads us to ...

Minor Stage Hiccup #5
Smoke alarms. Apparently Coffee Bean doesn't encourage customers to roast their own beans. Hmmph.

Nicole poked the candles into the cake, and i stopped her, since she was destroying it. I licked the biggest one for jest. Then as Kenny was camwhoring with the cake knife, Nicole came up with the brilliant idea of sticking a candle into the cake and forcing Kenny to pull it out with his teeth (Kuching Birthday rituals are more exotic than African ones, apparently). And, this led to ...

Stage Hitch #6
That candle was the exact same one i had licked.

Uh-oh.

We solved it by giving that part of the cake to me, which incidentally was the part of the cake with the MOST icing. You know, sometimes i swear Kenny and gang want to give me pulmonary heart disease. Hmmph.

We sang the Big Man a happy birthday song, and he cut the cake. The cake immediately looked like how one of those Klang Valley cliffs looked like after a particularly nasty rainfall (read: landslide). We all ate dreamily, enjoying chocolate-induced happiness.

Then we started playing "Honey I Love You". This was where things started getting weird.

Kenny apparently wanted to marry me, thus raising questions about what gender was i underneath my jeans. I proposed to Wen Qi, and Wen Qi propose to Ravin.

Both were blushing so hard it was difficult to know who was proposing to who.

Ravin proposed to Samantha, and Samantha proposed to Garrick.

Garrick did a marvellous speech on Nicole. So it came to be that Nicole had to propose to Ben.

Poor Ben.

After which we come to the cutest picture of the entire gathering:

Ben proposing to Vivian.

In the end Nicole tried proposing to Paul, but she failed miserably. Paul was absolutely brilliant. In the end the only person who didn't kena was Zhe Rong, but only because Vivian was too shy to do anything about that.

The girls left for Girls Brigade shortly after, and we went to Tun Jugah for a little salivating at all the Macs, plus lunch.

And then we departed. You know, looking back, it's a wonder we can have so many gatherings together. We won't exactly win a Tony award for all the Hiccups.

But, as they say - the show must go on! Happy Birthday to the BiG MaN Kenny Voon, and may the new year bring plenty of opportunities and prosperity to his home, his car, and his love life!

*gee that sounds corny*

Dramatization brought to you by Eli James and his terlalu- free time. Someone remind him of the real world, please. He hopes you have enjoyed yourselves. Now go join UGS immediately!