Finally, Good Friday was upon us; and, in tradition of care group dating back to the turn of the century, this meant having a picnic at Botanical Gardens. In true tradition, it was destined to rain as well. Serious! It’s been raining every Good Friday since as long as I can remember. Well, you can’t really blame the weather considering someone precious died on this very day for all of us!
Nonetheless, there was a Plan B – bring an umbrella (which I informed some folks meeting earlier to do). Unfortunately, this plan was also thwarted when cats and dogs started to fall from the sky right after lunch. Finally, we settled on Plan C – to partake in a sumtuous dinner while mischieviously plotting the sabo of our April birthday girl, Yixi.
Wee Leong and Yixi. Wee Leong wasn’t even aware that we were planning a sabo but somehow managed to end up on the receiving end of Yixi’s suspicious questioning.
Our initial plan was to have dinner at Marche Heeren. However, thanks to their policy of not allowing outside food in, Changky, Merv and Guppy (encumbered with Yixi’s birthday cake) had to hunt for another place to eat. Finally, after meandering about, the birthday SWAT team settled on NYDC just outside Heeren. Interestingly, NYDC allowed us to bring the cake in but not consume it on their premesis. Argh, thanks to that, I was scratching my head thinking of Plan D!
In the meantime…
Ashley – the other center of attraction!
Looking around for food, as usual. Could there be coco-cows up the coconut tree?
Aha! Found one! Wait… Ashley smells something fishy here… “Mum, does that one make strawberry milk?”
If you stare hard enough, you can see Ashley grabbing onto Guppy’s finger below.
Amleth, our new chairperson, getting into the groove of his new IslandHope role. “Chairbear, STARE!!!”
After sundown, Guppy transforms into an undercover NYDC waiter with a pony tail!
Dinner ended around 8.15pm and throughout the night, we all played our part by planting ideas of a horrible and messy sabo in Yixi’s head. Sometimes, the power of suggestion can be worse than the actual thing itself if done on the right person! As we couldn’t eat the cake at the restaurant, we decided to head back to my place where there was more freedom to take our time and, umm, carry out our “plan”. On the pretext of needing extra time to prepare for the sabo (something we purposely made sure Yixi overheard), Changky and Guppy left earlier to actually purchase movie tickets for a 9.25pm show at Tiong Bahru.
While waiting for the remaining few to arrive, we indulged in a game of Text Twist. In between, Andrew somehow managed to usurp the keyboard away from our resident “Twister”, Pris.
Somebody looks disappointed! *Pouts* Just kidding… Pris was more than happy to let her fingers have a break!
Finally, the moment we had all been waiting for! Yixi and her soon to be hubby enjoying her last birthday as a happily attached single!
After that, it was affirmation time for this dear sister and there were many encouraging words spoken that night about how she had made use of her gift of creativity to bless the care group. In addition, many were also inspired by her stepping up recently to assume the unit administrator role, something that nobody would’ve thought possible one year ago! Indeed God is working through her life as she serves and takes care of the people in His flock.
Note: Yixi’s birthday is actually on the 17th of April but we decided to celebrate earlier anyway. What’s a few days!
All together now!
Finally, the highlight of the night – breaking the news to Yixi that there wasn’t any sabo after all. You should’ve seen the relief on her face when the truth was out! So much for all that effort spent negotiating a way out with Merv and Changky, the masterminds, during dinner!
Zhiyi and Ashley, appearing just in time as we were about to leave for our show!
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