Life on the Spot! Life and Leisure in Doha, Qatar

September 28, 2008 - Today was Tian’s 32nd birthday.  But it was like an ordinary week day as he still had to go to work.  His Eid holiday starts only on Wednesday.  And because he was away during the day and Xiane and I are already having our holiday, we were able to pull off a little surprise for Tian.

Xiane made this card for his dad, with 3 butterflies inside a heart signifying mom, dad and Xiane.  It says “I love you daddy” on top and Happy Birthday at the bottom.  Then at around 11am we went to The Mall to buy his favorite blueberry cheesecake from Opera Café.  Thank God it is open during the day even on Ramadan.  We also got him a box of Swiss chocolates although he doesn’t really eat chocolates that much. He was actually teasing me that I bought it for me.  I got him a 32 number candle which I placed on the cake.

I arranged the cake, the box of chocolates and Xianelle’s card on the dining table so that when he came he would readily see them.  Then I looked outside the window and waited till he came.

We lit the candles and as soon as he opened the door, Xiane and I started singing “Happy birthday” to him.  Unfortunately, being my emotional self, only Xiane got to finish singing the song because I already got teary-eyed and all.  I just felt happy that we were able to make his birthday, special somehow.

We just had Lucky Me (a Filipino brand) pancit canton for lunch.  We didn’t want to get too full since we were going to eat out at 5pm.  We took a short nap and woke up just in time to leave for City Center.

As soon as we entered Applebees we received a very warm welcome from all the staff which consisted mostly of Filipinos.  They were so glad to see us, especially Xianelle because we haven’t visited since we came back from vacation.  One of the staff even told us that she had a hunch that we were coming tonight and we did!  We’re just so pleased with the ever wonderful staff of Applebees.  They also sang happy birthday to Tian.  We left the place happy and satisfied.  I would have wanted to stay in City Center a bit longer but the “birthday boy” wanted to leave early to avoid traffic.  Besides he still has work tomorrow.  So that was how we celebrated my husband’s birthday.  Am I glad that we had a nice celebration despite being away from our families.  Till your 33rd! Happy birthday!