MIKESTOPFORTH

I’m not very good at the whole birthday thing. I normally forget birthdays or at best wish the subject on the right day of the wrong month, or vice versa. I was born on my mom’s birthday, and she is a twin, so there’s three of us on one day in our family which at the very least means I’ll never forget those. Then again…

Normally I encourage those close to me to forget my birthday as insurance against my own sieve-like mind, but regardless of my efforts I received two particularly cool surprises for my birthday this last weekend.

The first was a hand-made gift from my long-time partner-in-crime Peter Le Roux. We grew up together, attended the same schools (missed out on high school) and later met up again to rediscover our shared passions for technology, junk food and the Dave Matthews Band.

Peter arrived at BarCamp Jozi on Sunday morn and handed me a box with an perfect little origami MacBook Pro inside it – I kid you not. I was moved enough just at the uniqueness of the gift, only to discover once I ‘opened’ the notebook that the little display had a picture of the Sci-Bono center I had taken and uploaded to my flickr account the previous day on it. Check it out:

Then I arrived home last night to discover that my precious wife had organised a little surprise party with pasta and wine and friends and all that good stuff. It was just what I needed.

Birthdays, it seems, have their upsides :)