Christmas musings

This Christmas I have no idea why I keep procrastinating with finishing up the wrapping of my Christmas presents and writing my Christmas cards. I’m not exactly overly stressed up as I do not have a lot of crazy projects at work to handle for the moment. Somehow I’m not really excited with the presents bit this year. Maybe because I have to wrap SO MANY (including my mum’s)!

With Christmas coming up and all the festive activities and promotions taking place in the hotel, it is so easy to forget why I celebrate Christmas. Being in Marketing Communications, I’m being forced to place myself in the mindset that promotions are the best way to pull in more business, and the best time to feature promotions is during the festive season when everyone is in the celebratory mood. Basically, it boils down to money – and I’m the one who has to do the dirty work of pushing out these news to the public. Again, it’s all about the money – because I’m being paid to do so!

I’ve got to keep reminding myself of the real meaning of Christmas. It’s really not that difficult – in my job, there’s always tons of information that comes along with the festive season, but in real life, Christmas means just one word – “Jesus”. I was looking through quotes about Christmas (I have the cheesy habit of writing poems and quotes in my Christmas cards), and I came across this quirky little poem which made me laugh:

Roses are reddish
Violets are bluish
If it weren’t for Christmas
We’d all be Jewish

How true! If it weren’t for the birth of Christ, we’d be like them Jewish folks still wondering when Christ will come down to earth. I wonder how they share the Good News when they cannot proclaim that Jesus has already come and gone, when we are already awaiting His second coming. Sounds pretty strange to me. Anyway, isn’t it wonderful to know that out of all the religions, Jesus is the only God who actually came to earth to ‘touch base’ with His people? (Buddha doesn’t count ‘cos he isn’t a god – Eh, unless you are a Satanic worshipper then you might be pleased to know that the devil is in town, at least in the Supernatural TV series hehehe)

I’m really looking forward to Christmas this year and meeting up with loved ones (too bad Mr Loh will be returning to his hometown; I’ll miss him terribly). Can’t wait for the annual sleepover with my church mates and my mini party with my clique from work. There’s lots more to look forward to actually.  After all that’s been said and done, I must say I’m truly blessed to have a happy loving caring family, crazy friends who love me, colleagues who care, and my dream job – among other things. But the greatest blessing of all is to have received the unconditional love of God. (Actually, folks, we’ve all experienced a love that knows no boundaries – we just gotta wake up from our stupor and realise it!)

Review of Up in 3D

As mentioned previously, the boyfriend has been bugging me to watch Up with him. I’ve been shrugging it off due to disinterest, but because of our deal, I accompanied him to watch the movie yesterday night.

I have never caught a movie in 3D before and was caught a bit offguard when Cathay employees handed out these eyeglasses to us. The eyeglasses were too large for me and they kept falling off my face and that really annoyed me. Other than that, I was excited to experience firsthand watching the movie in 3D.

  
(Spoilers ahead)

The movie itself was based on a simple plot. Old man going on an extreme adventure to fulfill his dreams (and his late wife’s). It was difficult to fathom how an old man who depended heavily on a walking stick could ‘carry’ his house on his back and walk a long distance upon a rocky ground. I know it’s a cartoon – but I can’t get over this.

My colleagues were telling me how touching the story was and yadda yadda. Alright, yes, the fact that the old guy would go so far to fulfill the biggest dreams of his wife was touching. Well I can concede and agree that their life story was really sweet and romantic…. (Although I also can’t get over how the old foggy would make his weak wife climb up a steep hill)

But the fact is – the old guy is dumb. Why? Because he made an assumption and went too far ahead with it and almost got himself and others killed in the process. He assumed that his wife’s childhood ambition would stretch till her after-life, even though he had many opportunities to look into her adventure book and find out if she had changed her to-do list. Well, he found out eventually that she did. Her adult adventure was to spend her life with him – which she fulfilled.

As for the childhood hero who turned into a raging madman – I can only conclude this: Don’t over-idolise your heroes; they may not be who you think they are!

You will probably have thought I’m a hater by now. The reality is, I think Up is an interesting movie which I feel teaches realistic values through its unrealistic story. I did love the funny scenes – the naivety of Dog, the jovialness of Russell, the squeaky voice of Alpha the scary dog, and the colourful bird called Kevin.

Watching Up in 3D was in itself an adventure for me. The movie wasn’t too shabby, but I still prefer Dreamworks Animation!

Paper Hearts & Dettol Loving

When Jonathan and I boarded bus 162 on Saturday evening, I met a friend’s JC-aged brother. I waved to him while walking past and sat two seats behind. The boyfriend was on the phone and I was looking out the window when B attracted my attention. He passed me a paper heart which he made – “for you,” he said  – and told me not to unfold it because it “looks nice” the way it was.

The boyfriend was on the phone at the time, but he saw what happened. After he got off the phone and when B alighted, the boyfriend expressed – albeit in few words – that he was annoyed that another guy would pass me a paper heart right in front of him. “Ahh… Jealousy,” I thought to myself. It was cute though.

Remembering a long time back when the boyfriend had folded a ten-dollar paper heart and given it to me – which I ended up using at one time because I was short of cash – I then offered him my old one-dollar note (which Van had refused to let me use at Esteller) to fold into a heart. The boyfriend lapped up the offer. He happily took the dollar note and folded it into a heart and instructed me to put it into my wallet (and it was understood that under no circumstances was I to use it).

Being a girl, I naturally welcomed the attention – from two guys nonetheless! At the expense of sounding conceited, I have to confess that it’s rather flattering having guys tussle over my ‘affections’. (Yes, an actual physical fight between two guys took place because of me once)

… You were probably wondering what “Dettol loving” in the heading meant. It is a different story and has nothing to do with the paper hearts…

You see, because of H1N1, my colleague Matt and I have been taking turns spraying our department with Dettol to sanitize the air. As you can probably tell by now, I’ve been very paranoid and the Dettol smell assures me that the air I breathe in is clean.

My other colleague LL gets a little scared at my zealous attempt at trying to sanitize the entire department. So I threatened her via Facebook just now that I would “spring a Dettol-ish surprise” on her. When she left work, I carried out my threat. I stuck the following up on her already-crowded wall.

Then I left a note on her computer monitor…

I can’t wait to see the look on her face tomorrow.

The Movie Plan

When I first told Jonathan that I wanted to catch Bruno, he gave me a look – like I was absolutely insane for wanting to do so. Then when he kept trying to persuade me to watch Up with him, I returned the look – ‘cos the idea of watching the ‘cartoon’ sounded absolutely ridiculous to me.

At first we both refused to budge. Then I came up with a plan – he would pay for my ticket to watch Up with him (‘cos I wouldn’t pay to watch it), I would pay for his ticket to watch Bruno with me (‘cos he wouldn’t pay to watch it), and we would each pay for our own tickets to watch The Proposal (‘cos we both wanted to watch it).

When Jonathan first heard The Plan, he argued that if we ended up watching  only Up and The Proposal then he would end up having to pay for most of the tickets. I countered that if we watched only two movies then I would pay for tickets for one movie. But to seal the deal, I told him that it was either we watched all the three movies or none at all (we had kept trying to persuade each other to just catch the movie we wanted to watch online). Being the big movie buff he was, he couldn’t resist saying no. So he said yes. Done deal.

It’s rather late now and I want to go to bed – in the next few days (by that, I mean I hope tomorrow) I shall write about Jonathan’s new fitness and diet regime plus our movie outing to catch Bruno… Good night for now!

Hello and Goodbye

The time has come when I have decided to emigrate in search of greener pastures and I think I have found it here. So it’s hello WordPress and goodbye Blogger.

WordPress: You excited me with your fantastic features and I hope I get to make good use of you. Let’s toast to a new beginning!

Beloved Blogger: You have served me well over the past few years and it’s been great blogging with you. I regret that I haven’t been making full use of you, especially in the last couple of months, nonetheless I shall always retain sweet memories of you.

Other than the abovementioned hello and goodbye, I have another hello and goodbye to toast…

Hello August 2009,
This month marks the first year of my relationship with Jonathan. It’s amazing how when you are happy time flies by so quickly. I never anticipated that we could make it this far, despite all our differences (language, cultural, religious, etc). But you are the great love of my life, and I want you to know how much this past year with you means to me… Indeed you are the best thing that happened to me yet!

Goodbye August 2008,
You brought me love halfway across the globe – thank you for that. I will always reminisce about the places that Jonathan and I visited in Europe, and I will forever hold dear to my heart the intimate knowledge I have gained about my darling England. When I left Liverpool, I left a part of my heart with her…

This marks the end of my first blog post, but stay tuned for more entries coming right up!