The Opera Populaire

First of all, happy belated (at least on the blog) birthday to my dear Mom! Felt sad that I can't celebrate with her nor even have the decency to at least send her a birthday card, but oh well. Hopefully can make up for it somehow.

Had a quiet Christmas, with occasional moments of fun and that warm fuzzy feeling.

The eve of Christmas eve was spent giving out and receiving nice little presents of sweets and chocolates with my colleagues and supervisors. Then it was a mind-numbing, monotonous day of trying to complete an urgent task while moaning whether we could go home at 5.30 pm. It was good to work with another person, though. Kinda missed the days of project work when the burden was shared. Glad to be able to talk and giggle around with my colleague...to the point of making another telling us jokingly to keep the volume down. Thank God my another assignment din manage to make it so I was free by 6.

Off I went to meet Sarah for a nice little dinner at Curry Flavour before going to the Esplanade to watch the ACJC Choir performance. Lovely! The choir lives up to their high reputation. Made me recall my days at AJC Choir as well. I din manage to do carolling back then, but I remember the fun we had performing "Peter and the Dragon" in CHIJMES and Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Aspects of Love" in VCH. We went walking about the Esplanade to the Fullerton Hotel afterwards, which is especially lovely at this time of the year. The photos I took of the Fullerton decorations din do justice to its actual beauty. The decor is basically red in theme, with red candles, mistletoes and poinsettias. It is the nicest I have seen thus far.

Christmas eve morning and afternoon was spent catching up on sleep before going to church in the late afternoon. We had a game where we had to dress a person up as Santa Claus with the materials provided and poor Steven kena the model part again, though he tried to make me the model, citing the fact that I was late. The prize was actually for the "Sexiest Santa" and we won, thanks to Steven, who complained that he couldn't see how he looked after we dress him up! This despite the other group, who gave their Santa a bikini top and made him say,"I can make all your dreams come true!" Tsk tsk.

Some of the lucky peeps I gave presents and cards to have theirs sealed with this special old-fashioned red seal that those Europeans used in the past. Saw it in the Philatelic Museum and couldn't resist buying it. Hee.

Pearl had kindly invited some of us over for a nice cosy little Christmas dinner at her place. Thought the plates and little cups she used were very pretty indeed. My family is never that dainty heh.

It was hilarious to see her and Hong Xian rush over to preen themselves when all I wanted was to take their photos and make them into my handphone caller ID!

This gal...she took so many nice picts of the various History classes but never once had she shown us any of them till now! Felt so nice to see how we were like about 1 year or so ago. Indeed, life has changed for all of us and it is nice to have mementos like the photos to remember those carefree undergraduate times by.

Watched "Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" with Sarah yesterday. My aunt dismissed it as merely a children's show, but I think there is a deeper meaning to the whole movie. Tried to read CS Lewis' "Mere Christianity" last year, but never got beyond the 3rd chapter. Found him a bit difficult to understand. But perhaps I may get the "Chronicles of Narnia" after all. Speaking of which, I really need a good devotional. Will try to make a trip down to Techman to browse soon. Oso feel that I've reading too little lately. Dun like the feeling of a starving brain...