christmas this and that
22/12/2008
The most tolerable radio station I’ve found since I got here, turns into “the Bay Area’s Christmas Station” this time of the year. Lest you roll your eyes in disbelief that there are enough Christmas-themed tunes to play all-day, apparently, there are. It’s a little disturbing.
I’m not sure how I feel about Christmas in SF. It’s a lot colder than I’m used to. There’s something comforting about December in sunny Singapore. Suddenly the air is drier, which makes shopping fun, the sky is clear and blue, and it smells crisp. That crisp once a year weather, is at the same time comforting and unnerving – on the one hand it’s Christmas and it’s time to wrap the year up, and on the other, the new year hits you like a ton of bricks a week later, and you realise the break was over before it really began. The Christmas-themed music tones down (with the exception of Last Christmas, which has a longer shelf life, to my glee) to make way for gong-xi-gong-xi-gong-xi-nis, and you treat the post-Christmas low with some pre-CNY binging. It was a good system. I liked it. By the time CNY and everything was done, you’re almost at the second quarter and things need to accelerate so you don’t even have time to think about it. You just gotta hit the ground running.
Since I got here, I haven’t really attempted to do any real Christmas shopping. Last year I ordered everything online. This year, I bought everything while I was at the outlets in September. Ha. Traffic isn’t as crazy as it was last year, though. Which is probably a sign of the times. Weather-wise, it’s a little depressing, days end at about 4pm, and it’s freezing and wet. The most fun I have some days with the weather is playing “how low can it go before I turn the heater on”.
We’ll be having dinner with KF’s family – his cousins usually cook up a storm, and maybe in the day we’ll try and catch a movie or something. I’ve no idea what we’re going to do with ourselves on Christmas. Maybe we’ll spend it preparing my nifty new Mushroom Growing kit. Home-grown button mushrooms! We’ll see how that goes…
Anyway. Happy Christmas everyone. Have a good year ahead too.
