Blessed Christmas

If you've read the previous post, no, I have not started taking medication. It seems that making my Christmas wish early in December is just about right for the magic to happen by the twenty-fifth. This year, I asked for an epiphany. It's about time I've moved further along the path to finding the meaning of Life, and while the beer goggles helped, letting Life pass you by in a blur is only so much fun.

So the epiphany has been happening in fits and starts. Oprah would have called it a series of a - ah - ah- ha! moments. From pulling off amazing events, to realizing what my calling is, to celebrating beautiful friendships forged over the year and, finally, being able to feed my family some decent grub myself, I am ready to end the year satisfied. In spite of the few low points which isn't unexpected, I am quite proud to say that I've lived and loved through 2009 in a way I have never done before. The sheer intensity and gamut of experiences still baffles me sometimes and the only thing I can ask for now, is that next year will be at least the same. There are already some doors which I've got my hand on I hope I will be spending 2010 pushing thru them with more veracity, tenacity, vivacity and zeal than ever before.

Here's to everyone who's made my 2009 and whom I will make 2010 with. "Bravo, Brava!"

Come on.. does X'mas always have to be about love? I mean, do you really need the happy family reunions, discovering true love and finding santa crap to truly appreciate X'mas? No. Because then you'd have to have endured a broken family, been tormented by unrequited love and suffered the trauma that comes with having to abandon Santa coz you had to "grow up" prior in the year. That's bollocks! What fool will wish that on themselves?

Please, people. We need to learn to be content with what we realistically can have. There are loads of gifts and turkeys and lot's of pie and that should be enough. Yearning for the "true spirit of Christmas" is just setting oneself up for disappointment. Do you really need to meet Santa , or can you just be happy with the presents under the tree?

It's the time of the month again, for ranting at whatever's caught my fancy. I've done the whole end-of-the-world thing and decided that as a species, and an individual, we (I) are too ball-less to attempt all the "if the world would end tomorrow" wishes until the world is actually at an end or is very close to, by which time, there won't be any bank tellers who will hand over all your savings nor will there be pilots to fly us all to Rio/Paris for that one last party/croissant.

So bring on 2012, we will always live like there is a tomorrow, in case there IS a tomorrow. We totally need to grow a pair.

I've also just been browsing the profiles of TED members who have indicated that they reside in Singapore and realized that, what feels like 80% of the members, don't have profile pictures. I wonder if this is just a case of them all looking warty, have extremely low self-esteem, are simply too lazy to find a decent picture/image that represents themselves or they're afraid to be identified. Granted, most used their (or what we assume is theirs, honestly) names rather than pseudonyms, I do believe it's the last one that's got them all scared. But why should they be afraid? The powers that be only clamp down on unfavourable opinions. You don't even have one so you've really got nothing to fear.

Then there's the whole hanging of this Malaysian drug offender. Does anyone care? Of course! Do enough care? Not nearly. Does it change anything? Duh - of course not. We have a vast, silent majority - as has been proven repeatedly - so how does anyone expect anything to change?

Unless of course, it is something major, like the Reunification of Orchard. Are there only two people who are repulsed at there is now a theme for the entire Orchard Shopping Belt not only during CNY and Christmas but for the ENTIRE DECADE? Only 2 things could have happened - the powers that be decided that homogeneity is the new black, or in times of economic depression, ALL the developments in the OSB have pooled together their resources to hire the same architect to design their brand spanking new buildings.

I wonder how much each of them now have to spend on PR/AD agencies to create a brand personality to distinguish them from their competitors down the road because they have the exact same imported boutiques/restaurants/services. Geniuses.

When everything goes down the proverbial drain pipe, can we preserve Ngee Ann City, Tangs Plaza and Wisma as National Retail Monuments please? The other steel and glass replicas of each other, with their convoluted escalators/lifts that never go to the floor that you need to reach and mall directories that you have to queue up to use can be replaced by proper shops that aren't the third appearance of a chain within a kilometer. What happened to "pleasant shopping experience"? How did we become these retail anorexics who binge on skinny jeans and a diet of only Zar*, Un!qlo and Co**on-freaking-on?

Do we, as a society, actually like this? Are we, as a society, like this?