As I grow older, birthdays are starting to lose their shine.

I mean, what’s there to celebrate when every birthday is a step closer to my eventual demise?

And don’t get me started on surprise birthday parties -- those are the worst.

Often, the element of surprise supersedes what the recipient of surprise really wants: peace and quiet.

Just imagine this: you enter a room with people (disclaimer: pre-Covid days of course) you’ve not met for a while and have to make excruciating small talk while eating food that you may or may not enjoy (it’s a hit or miss, this one).

Ok, I sound like the grinch.

I digress.

So when foodpanda came knocking with a brief that contains keywords “plan”, “own”, “party”, I jumped at the chance of playing planner for my own birthday party so that I could create an epic party for my family and I.

Fingers crossed.

D-1 (1 day prior to D-Day)

First things first

Guess what was the first thing I ordered? This:

Yes, the elixir of life. As the planner of my own birthday party, I had to get my client’s (read: yours truly) priorities right.

I went straight to foodpanda’s shop tab and hunted down his request for his favourite Japanese whisky.

(Okay to prove that I’m not drunk while writing this, I shall stop referring to myself in third person from now on.)

With a “Drinks” category as prominent as this, my job was made a whole lot easier.

Then I compared the prices and found the perfect (read: lowest) price at Cellarbration. I also made sure the whisky arrived first the next day. Priorities, guys, priorities.

Of course, not forgetting drinks for my two fledglings.

And ice cream.

These two were easily found in pandamart, which is a lot like a legit supermarket, which means that things can sometimes be hard to find.

I’m pretty sure you sometimes have trouble looking for the snacks aisle in a physical supermarket.

But the beauty of an online supermarket means you can always search for it in the search bar.

Oh, and pandamart delivers 24/7 and each delivery can be as fast as 30 minutes. Nifty.

Did I say supermarket? Because look at what I found next.

Playing dress up

Every successful person looks and dresses the part; you need to own your style like how Zuckerberg owns t-shirts. Or how Jobs is synonymous with his trainers.

So if you apply the same logic to a birthday party, you’d need to dress it up in style.

Lo and behold what I found in pandamart:

Yes, an outdoor and partyware section.

A few clicks later, these two items ended up in my shopping cart.

And party balloons, which you will see later (please continue reading for epic party decor).

Next up: food.

With a dizzying (no, it’s not the whisky) selection of food options, I was at a loss to what to order for my surprise birthday party.

But luckily I still had a day to decide. Time for this party planner to knock off.

D-Day

Ah, happy birthday to my 38-year-old self.

The deliveries came like clockwork. The whisky came at 11am and the pandamart items came at 3pm.

Which gave me plenty of time to decorate the place.

Achtung: You are about to enter the no-context-pictures zone that depicts my maiden journey as a birthday planner.

I should probably explain why the decorations ended up on the floor.

It was because of tape. Or the lack of it.

All in all, it took me just an hour to dress up my party.

Like clockwork, my tummy did a rumble and started to protest about how putting up (or down) the decorations was a calorie-busting workout.

It was time to order my party food.

One of the reasons why people celebrate birthdays is because it’s a good reason to let yourself go for a day.

And ergo, I ordered burgers from Wolf Burgers.

The delivery took just 30 minutes.

Look, I ain’t no Instagram husband. So that was me at my photojournalism best.

We started to dig in, with our drinks on the side.

I just had to do this because look at the very creative way of decorating a birthday party.

At this point, you must be wondering: what’s a birthday party with no cake?

Well, this is the beauty of planning your own birthday party: I don’t fancy cakes, I fancy whisky; I don’t buy cakes, I buy whisky.

Simple.

The hours went by as quickly as a foodpanda delivery (since this is sponsored, please allow me to plug my sponsor); the burgers and fries wolfed (pun intended) and washed down by said elixir of life.

It was delightful for everybody, especially my wife, who commented that birthday parties are nice but free birthday parties are nicer.

But that wasn’t the point.

The point, as I sat down contemplating life with whisky in hand, was that birthday parties aren’t that bad after all.

I might do it again next year. Hit me up, foodpanda.

This is a sponsored article by foodpanda. Duh.