This year I decided to work on my birthday and not take the day off as I normally do each year. Why not work on my birthday nothing really significant happens? - no celebrations virtually no presents and no special treatment.
It was actually too busy to celebrate my birthday but I did make myself a cake and a work collegue made me the most beautiful chocolate frosted chocolate cake. The manager and another work collegue gave me a card and a small box of chocolate truffles which was really nice and my other work collegues came and visited or phoned to say happy birthday which was really nice. It was not all about receiving though, I always ensure whenever I make a cake I take a piece to my 2 special needs friends I made that also work in St Ives Shopping Village - Kate and Nick (also one of my bus buddies).
One of my work collegues made me wear a birthday girl badge and she had the happy birthday flashing light and sound cake topper out constantly playing it. So embarassing! I took the badge off a few times only ro have it put back on by my work collegue! It is ok to tell customers at the counter that it is also your birthday too today if they have a friend or relative with a birthday on the same day but not announce it to everyone in the store!
Probably my best customer of the day was a guy that came in and was looking for a rather large jar to put all his boxes of Lindt chocolates into to give as a thank you gift to the nurses at North Shore Hospital. I suggested a large Maxwell Williams Olde English jar and suggested I put a nice bow around its neck. So after taking the price off, he emptied all the wrapped Lindt chocolates into the jar and they fitted in the jar perfectly. I then sealed the lid of the jar with some tape around it and then tied a really fluffy multicoloured organza bow around the neck of the jar. It looked really nice then I warpped a little bit of white tissue paper around it and a Plenty sticker and popped it in a bag. The funny thing was I had mentioned it was my birthday (it was probably obvious already to everyone) and he had dropped one of the chocolates and gave it to me and I had to say "no thanks, I think I have had enough chocolate for today!" so popped it back into the jar before sealing it - perfect fit!
A few other customers came in on my birthday also looking to purchase gistd fir their friends and relatives who shared the sane birthday as me. I explained bout how it us bad luck being born on the 4th as in Chinese the word 4 sounds like the word death whereas some Caucasians actually think 4 is goid luck. I had to explain how even though some Caucasians think being born on any multiple of 4 is then also bad luck that it does not actually work like that ie if you are born on the 8th it is twice the bad luck and how one of my uni friends who was born on the 16th thought he had 4 times the bad luck . No in Chinese tradition and my mother always believed it 8 is actually a very lucky number.
I was trying to plan my birthday weekend but had so much trouble with trying to purchase a Sydney Open ticket online - I must have tried 5 times but it kept looping back to the info page or took an extremely long time thinking therefore I could not get to the "purchase a ticket" stage. I sent an email and when I did not get a response I phoned and took out a membership which was better then just paying $49 just to go to the Sydney Open event. I regret it but it will get me priority access into a few popular buildings on Sunday at the Sydney Open event and discounts to other events I am interested in going to throughout the year that I may not have been to before. Example white wristband priority entry on Sunday 6th Nov 2016 to International Tower Barangaroo but it does not make up for all the booked out Saturday focus tours hence not being able to attend any of them and the long wait at the Museum of Sydney to pick up my membership pack - Sydney Living Museum is one organisation I would never apply for a job at!!!!!! So disorganised and do the front of house staff actually know what they are doing? It didn't seem like it - surely they receive some sort of training prior to commencing their jobs?!
To make my birthday weekend even worse I emailed and rang Taronga Zoo about my $1 birthday entry (which I had registered for many months in advance) asking if I could use it on 5th Nov rather then 4th as I had to work all day in my birthday - no response to my email and a flat "no" when I rang to follow up and asked - they are now black listed from my list of places to visit and will not be recommended on my blog. Visitors take note - Taronga Zoo not recommended to visit. Surely they could be a little more flexible - they were last time I went during VIVID but again they did not respond to my email inquiry and I was only given a complementary sky ride when I spoke to an actual staff member on site at Taronga Zoo on the night of my visit explaining what happened - yes I paid full price for my entry that night.
I also missed out on a free lunch for my birthday at Oporto because I was working on my birthday.
That makes 2 missed complimentaries this year - talk about bad luck.
In addition to purchasing a membership for Sydney Living Museums, I also purchased a membership to MCA - I do not regret purchasing this as I have been at least 3 times this year to the MCA as well as the NGV! I love both art galleries.
Stay tuned... I am unsure how I am going to blog and upload the hundreds of photos videos and events I went to over the weekend!!!! Will try to. Will catch up hopefully by Tuesday!!!!
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