Insignificant Others

Growing up I have always been the comedian/drama queen. I get very touchy when it comes to my birthday. As a kid I expect everybody to remember; if one of my cousins missed to greet me I would sulk and mope all day long. That bad huh? I know! When I get a little older I have moved on from the close relatives to close friends to close co-workers. In the office I expect confettis or a gigantic balloon with my name on it, flowers, cakes the works. Everything has to be exquisite. In spite of all the parties and such I still feel that somehow there are something that my friends and colleagues aren't able to fulfill. The surprise party! That's because most of my celebrations are planned! I wonder; has it ever occur to my friends that I sometimes would like to expect the unexpected at least? I mean seriously, they plan things a week ahead or even worse a month ahead! The problem is most of those plans never manifest into an actual event; they remained as concept till I get over it.

Speaking of getting over it; this year, I completely stop caring! I almost forgot about it when I woke up this morning! I just got up and worked out and can I just say that there is something utterly annoying in working out in the morning. It's bad enough that I have the same schedule as the rest of Dubai's Desperate Housewives; I also have to watch them gossip amongst them selves and build gangs in class rooms so they can occupy the great spots. I will talk about this one day. That and the cellulites and saggy boobs, implants, everything you see in a women's locker room!

Going back to my original beef of the day; for a week now I successfully managed to ignore the rest of the universe and whatever significant this day has brought to me until yesterday….

The office phone rings....
Jess: Good afternoon (insert company name here) this is Jess
Lady on the other line: Hello I am calling from (hotel name) Hotel, can I talk to Jess?
Jess: (DUH! Didn’t I just ID myself earlier) You got her
Lady on the other line: Hello Madam could you send someone over to the hotel tomorrow to pick up the cake?
Jess: Huh? Cake? Someone ordered a cake? I didn't! What's the cake for?
Lady on the other line: Oh it's the cake for your birthday Madam!
Jess: Oh really? I don't really know if I can, I have work tomorrow, but if your cake is still available after 8 pm someone will eat it! (Lol) I mean I will pick it up.
Lady on the other line: Yes of course, just please claim it from the Pastries Boutique.

Weird! First of all how do they even know it's my b-day? Sure I put some of our insignificant low budgeted guests there but knowing my b-day is too much of information a Hotel used once a year can get a hold of, I'm officially scared now!
And what's with the Pastries Boutique somehow for me the word Boutique should only be associated with garments, fabric or textiles.

2 hours later an e-mail came through from a Head Hunter company wishing me Happy B-day but no mention of any cake at all! (cheap bastards! Lol!)
Several minutes later, I was flooded with e-mails from various companies like Souq.com, Hotmail and many others.
As if the day isn't weird enough I received sms form HSBC sending their wishes.
5 days back I been getting myspace messages from people I do not know of also with their greetings, then as I logged in today I read at least 10 offline messages from skype with the same intention-to wish me happy b-day!
OK Who are these people?

Despite the strangeness factor bit, I am deeply touched that the World Wide Web spent 1 second to remember! Sweet! So while I was absorbing this nostalgic relationship I have with the Internet I paused and asked myself. Am I all over the place? Am I too honest when filling out information online? I certainly am. Suddenly I am having an anxiety attack. I cannot distinguish the difference between feeling overwhelmed by how these insignificant others take a little time for me and being scared for putting too much truthful information online (aside from this blog of course where I chose to be somewhat anonymous)

As I slowly regain full consciousness I asked (again), where the hell are my friends? How come I get mostly impersonal greetings? Oh I remember 1 friend called me on the 5th and she was all like "Hey hey it's your b-day" I sighed and said, Dude you are calling the wrong friend, try again it's not the 7th yet.

Last night I received an overseas call from someone I used to totally hangout with. A friend that’s always hungry never full and she call me "Bitch" when she feels like being sweet. BUT the line got disconnected, the bad thing was, her number didn't appear on my phone so no way of calling her back - that bitch sure knows how to annoy me even when she's million miles away. I love and miss her though.

So anyway I wanted to go to sleep earlier last night for a change because you know, I normally get some shut eyes way past 2 am. My phone just never shut up, so I shut it off. This morning people started calling again. I intentionally ignore them as I took my time dressing up for work. Somehow I can’t ignore the ringing forever, I picked it up to find out that my friends wants to see me because they bought me a cake (another cake) I’m not really fond of the idea that collecting cakes will be the highlight of this day but whatever and I’m not even a cake person.

Now I am not sure where I stand with this birthday thing, it’s no longer a big deal to me. I just want to get it over with.