david chan's blog

I work at Invoke, making things in HootSuite and Ow.ly. As of this writing, the company is having a Christmas party tomorrow, and everyone has to bring a $20 gift for exchange.

I thought up a random gift.

After work, I headed over to Urban Outfitters (a great place for miscellaneous toys and things), and dug around. I wanted to get a camera, since I believe everyone at work likes taking photos. Unfortunately, most of the Lomos and the Holga cameras were way out of this budget (ranging from $50-90). Fortunately I found a LOL CAM, which is a single-use camera with funny stuff pre-printed on the film.

Great choice! But the camera was $14. Not to worry, my fridge was stocked some Innis & Gunn beers, each worth $3. I decided to include two of them. This gift is now epic!

No, not yet. What about wrapping? How does one present two beers and a camera? I think my gift is way too awesome to be given away in a gift bag. It deserves presentation greatness. Here’s the gift, in pieces:

I’ve decided to put it all in an old Converse shoe box. The beers will be kept safe with bubble wrap and package from buying ram at Newegg. All of this will be wrapped with a lining from a Diesel shoe box.

Alright, the beers are packed and so is the camera. But there is still some empty space in the box, which must be padded to prevent the contents from shifting. I know, I shall include the latest issue of Synergy, the UBC Science journal (which I get in exchange for receiving phone calls to donate money to my graduate faculty).

Now it is ready to be wrapped up. While looking for scotch tape, I found tissue paper wrapping that came with a Club Monaco shirt I bought, and decided to use it to wrap the gift. This is getting classy!

It’s done – my masterpiece. The gift even pretends it’s from Club Monaco, with the sticker, but my wrapping skills are too weak for anyone with common sense to be fooled. Either way, someone’s going to get an awesome gift this year.

I can’t publish this post until tomorrow afternoon, but I will announce who received this epic Christmas gift. Stay tuned.

Edit: my Christmas gift went over even better than I thought, and now belongs to the amazing Nadia Nascimento (in case you haven’t heard of this amazing woman, read this interview!)