God Jul… an opportunity for ranting
I can’t believe so much has changed between last Christmas and this year’s Christmas. Last year, well, last year I didn’t really celebrate Christmas. But Michelle and I followed the custom of the Swedes, celebrating Julafton at Victor’s by eating ham, rice porridge, ‘burned’ almonds, putting cloves into oranges, drinking julmust and glögg, and lastly, watching Donald Duck on tv.
In Hong Kong, there isn’t just much you could do about Christmas without spending big bucks to feel like it’s actually Christmas. Yeah, this is one very sad fact. But the fact that we don’t get snow or even chill… and having consumerism taken over the town… sometimes I thought I might be slightly pessimistic about it – shouldn’t I be doing something more active to try to change it? Nah – forget it, especially after putting in a planning application for multiple times, without never knowing exactly how to do one properly for a month, is tiring enough. I just want to relax in the least densely populated area in Hong Kong so that I don’t get bumped by sweaty strangers – and that’s my bed.
Anyway, this four-day vacation gives me a good opportunity to go through all the mess that I have been making physically and digitally that I have been putting off in clearing them e.g. organising pictures from last year in a sensible way and deleting huge-ass movies that has been eating up tons of the disk space. So hopefully my MBP will be slightly more cooperative when I am in a hurry trying to put together this video that I am preparing for my grandparents diamond anniversary dinner on Sunday.
I was also lucky enough to catch Thierry online! Geez, we haven’t directly interact ever since Paris – except Facebooking, if you consider that direct interaction… but you never know what how people think these days. Also, I received Peter’s postcard from Shanghai which made me read your last postcard from S’pore again. Didn’t you say you will do this one in Chinese? Maybe next time… To wrap it up, today has actually been quite overwhelmingly and emotionally connecting to Sweden.
In the spirit of Jul, may I put Kaho on the spot by posting this picture which captured his priceless face without seeking his consent. It made me laugh when I saw it. (Photo credit goes to Candy and it was taken in Sigulda in Latvia.)
Lastly, Merry Christmas/God Jul/Joyeux Noel/Frohe Weihnachten/Natale allegro to all my dear friends all over the world :)