You never get another chance to make a first impression...

Friday evening we celebrated Rvan's 40th birthday with a surprise party (organized by his very pregnant wife who had quite a lot of energy for someone who looks ready to explode at any moment -- in a lovely glowing way, of course!). I learned a couple of things:

• It's hard to hold a surprise party at 7pm without making it look a little odd when people who normally come in late and leave late all of the sudden start leaving at 6:30. Especially since the birthday boy was trying to hand off everything because he has to go on a business trip next week.

• My coworker Ngoc was telling me about when she was in college (in Vietnam) and she met one of the guys in her class. Her first thought was "whoever this guy marries is going to be miserable". They have now been married for over two decades, and their oldest child is in college. She claims her first impression was wrong.

The other funny story about Ngoc involves Rvan. They were hired at about the same time, and Ngoc was very grateful that Rvan helped her with so many things, not just work-related stuff, but things having to do with American culture. At some point Rvan made a joke that married women in America don't wear high heels. Unbeknownst to Rvan, Ngoc took him seriously, and was terribly embarrassed that she had been wearing heels. She switched over to wearing flats, and it wasn't until years later that I cleared up that misconception. (Of course, I've never seen her wear anything with a heel in the decade since then, so maybe it wasn't such a huge sacrifice on her part.) It's a good thing Ngoc doesn't hold grudges.