Christmas, surprisingly

And lo, on the night of the 25th of December 2011, I found myself cheering on a dear old friend as she entertained her nephews by concocting fake snow in her parents' living room in monsoonal Singapore. Of all the things I could've dreamed of us doing when we first met as doe-eyed 17-year-olds, blending Hamleys' Magical Snow and some tap water in a red plastic basin was not it.

It's been a hectic Christmas, and I blame my sleepiness on the copious amounts of wine I've drunk and the annual supernumerary consumption of tryptophan. Fortunately, all the turkey I sampled this year, even of the supermarket variety, has been tender and suitably moist. May every year be like this.

I can't believe that in a week, it'll be 2012. I know where December went: the friends' wedding, followed by catching up on work before Christmas hit. I just wish it hadn't gone by that quickly. December ought to be savoured, one tropical thunderstorm at a time, not lost in a frenzy of meetings and headdesking at local political gaffes, i.e. when Singapore's transport industry and public drainage system screwed up and tried not to look as if they were screwing up --- though they neatly took the heat off the land management authority's attempts to carve up the historical Bukit Brown cemetery.

I hope 2012 will be different. I need to catch my breath, and I get the feeling I'm not the only one.