"Is this a tie? What is it for?"
"Erm..." (still typing away)
"Is it personal?"
"Yeah..." (acts distracted)
"We don't do personal. You have to take this back."
"Okay sure. Thanks!"

Thank God Uncle BY who returned it to my desk was really nice and apologetic about it. "Sorry Miss... you know, we have to declare every item we ship out and when the invoice comes out for this, we will have a hard time justifying this with the company..."

Hah! My first black mark in the company. But I guess this ups the significance of every illegally-smuggled gift I have sent to the Tokyo, London and San Francisco offices. ;)

One day later, Joe gets caught for trying to mail bak kut teh spices to Ingy in the Hong Kong office. Except she didn't put her name on the envelope, so poor Ingy got a confusing e-mail about a "dubious" package that was meant for her but could not be shipped out and if she knew who the sender was.

That same afternoon, Joe and I had lunch with our colleagues Celine and Michelle from the Hong Kong office who were here on a holiday. We told them the story of the rejected packages, only to find out that sweet Celine had also once been caught trying to send to Singapore a box of chocolates she had painstakingly wrapped in many layers to conceal its indentity.

I feel much better now, but I wonder if this will stop me from trying again... hah!