Up a stump...

A surprise celebration during a group meeting while everyone's seriously reporting to the boss - how awkward was that? The good thing was, there's my name on the cake. The bad thing was, few were interested. I could've gone with a speech like, "I'm 23. I work at the 23rd floor. I've been yelled at 23 many times. I wish my increment is 23%, but of course, that's very unlikely... " but it didn't happen. They sang, a few munches here and there, and that's it. It's like acknowledging a janitor's retirement - OK, yeah, you worked hard, now let's move on.

The good thing was, I was never a big fan of this type of celebration anyway, so that's fine. The bad thing was, it showed how big of a gap we were having as groupmates. (That's because everyone's aggresively competing engineers?) Maybe once I'd like to be in an organization where everyone is like family. No interior/exterior motives. Just a team working together.