What I learned today is that a bonsai is not a plant, it’s a tree.

After realizing that someone special is having a birthday in three days—August 31st, I better do something quick before it’s all too late and a potential long night.

One of the important things to remember about buying a gift for someone’s birthday is the amount of recognition it can ignite. If you could buy a gift that costs a few dollars but it attracts a lot of attention and bring people to say “oh, I didn’t know today is your birthday! Happy Birthday!”. The gift becomes priceless almost instantly—no matter how little you paid for it. On the other hand, if you bought a gift that costs like a grand and it brings zero people to say happy birthday, well, the gift won’t be more than it is.

So, I decided I’d send her flowers at her internship in New Jersey with Kraft Foods Co. Surely, someone would see the flowers and say happy birthday to her. That’s what I’m talking about, the recognition.

Knowing that Google not only ranks websites based on their revelance but also their popularity, I simply typed “flowers” into the search and I would probably only bother to check out the top five sites. Interestingly, I knew FTD is a well-known flower delivery service but is ranked at #4; however, it does have an ad box out on top. Clearly, it has paid for that top ad placement. The first one to come out is 1800flowers.com. So I clicked on it and I can immediately see why it has the top rank. Clear, visible layout with a nice color scheme to match the “flowery” feeling. After browsing around, the pictures of flowers are nicely taken but I found the prices to be a tad high. So I put that website on hold and check out the top second website, virtualflowers.com. It has a simpler, less bold looking layout and the prices are a little lower.

I was initially planning to send her flowers but the images of flowers or roses came back to remind me that it wasn’t my first time getting her flowers and that all of them have withered, dried, and then died. I do recall that one time she said “maybe you should have gotten me a plant. I’d love to take care of it.” Bingo, time for me to get her a plant.

So, which plant? I looked at the plants and found nothing that seems to suit her taste and lifestyle. Most of them would look like a good choice for someone who’s in a hospital. Like if that person has a terminal disease and it wouldn’t be a good idea to send that person flowers ‘cuz they probably would die before s/he did.

I thought of what she’d like and what would be suitable for her office cubicle. Bingo, I know what kind of plant to get her. It’s a bonsai. So I quickly looked around and found some. Oops, it’s not a plant. It’s a tree! A bonsai tree. I quickly read about its history on the wikipedia to be a little more educated than I was ten seconds ago. I knew she would love it. She likes miniaturized, simple stuffs and a bonsai tree certainly falls into that category or at least I think so.

With this tree, she should have a soothing time looking at it and perhaps take a few minutes to cut a few shrubs from the little tree. I should know that ‘cuz she likes to cut my nails—both fingernails and toenails.

I started the checkout process and whew, if I order it tomorrow, it’s going to cost me 20 extra dollars to ship the tree. Instead, it’s 10 dollars. Fine with me. Now, if you’re still reading this, remember the recognition I mentioned earlier in this post? I feel that this tree alone is not going to garner a lot of attention so I decided to add a happy birthday balloon to it so that it can hover above the walls of cubicle world. It costs 5 dollars and hopefully more than 5 people will come to say happy birthday to her. :-)

Just so you know, Bonsai is a tree, not a plant.