Christmas 2006

Every year, as Christmas draws near, I wonder what it will be like. Of course, being in Singapore, there's no white Christmas. Ha.

Anyway, this was the first time that Christmas celebrations came right after the end of the Thai Mission Trip. It was no surprise therefore, that I was feeling rather tired throughout the Christmas weekend.

Sunday morning saw me in church in the morning attending the combined worship service. It was good to see some of the mission trippers there. It was plain to see that some others had been too tired to make the morning service, but that couldn't be helped.

After the service, I had breakfast with Jasmine, Grace, Hannah and Ronald at Breko's in Holland Village. The food there is alright, but not great. I shared some mission trip experiences with them over my breakfast of a muffin, bacon, fried and scrambled eggs, sausages, and Earl Grey Tea.

After that, I headed home for Christmas lunch. Mum had roasted a turkey. Fortunately I was still able to eat my share as I had clean forgotten about the lunch and had had a large breakfast. I love roast turkey. I think it tastes so great because it's only available once a year. Mum was also going to roast a side of beef for me to take to the Christmas party that Grace was holding at her place.

After lunch, I tried to settle down to write some cards. I only managed to write ten cards before I had to go back to church for the Thai dinner and the English Christmas Eve Concert. When I got there, Acaan Jaey asked me if the mission team was going to present anything at the Thai service. As we had made no arrangements for such a thing, I told her that I would try to get something going, but that I couldn't make any promises.

By God's grace, I managed to mobilise Doreen, Nicholas, Ziping, Shawn, Bryan, Yiwen, and Junwei. We sang "khong khwaan" at the service after I said a few words about the mission trip. Thanks guys and girls for the last minute help.

Went up to the sanctuary just in time to hear the special guest sing and give his testimony. The songs he sang were quite nice and meaningful, though what the congregation made of his rock style English song remains to be seen. I asked Joan if she was going to the party (Grace had invited her) and after some persuasion, she agreed.

With Emilline, Allan, and Joan, I drove home to pick up the beef then drove to Grace's place. Once there, we walked into the lobby to find that 2 of 3 lifts were out of order. Evan, her friend Tse Seng, and Vivien also came by. There were also other people in the lobby, mostly residents. After waiting a while, I thought I would walk up to Grace's place. I asked Joan if she would like to walk up the stairs but she looked at me as if I was crazy.

A little while later, I said I would take the staircase. Surprisingly, Joan came along too. So we went up the 19 floors, flight by flight. Luckily each flight didn't have too many steps to climb. After a good workout, we arrived at the 19th floor.

The party was alright. I guess the late hour meant that everyone was rather tired. Nat made a surprise appearance, telling us of his plan to fly to Manila the next day to propose to his girlfriend Irene (updated 30/12: by the way, she said yes!). We were all very happy for him and we hoped that things would go well.

Around 1:30am, most of us decided to go home. We faced a long drive westwards so we bade farewell to the party. I drove Joan home before driving myself home.

I got home around 2:00am and as I was waiting for the hot water heater to make hot water for me to bathe, I went online. Stacey came online so I said hello. We talked on MSN for about an hour before I decided it was time for me to sleep. I slept at 3:33am!

Merry Christmas!