You know its Christmas when…

your niece practices christmas carols at home for her performance.

Noelle is on the left of the girl in red, first row.

Time to get down and dirty

with work

for the first time in the year, i’ve taken a proper break from work. give and take work duties during the exams and miscellaneous meetings, i’ve taken 2 months from the 7am-7pm work day.

however, with about 2 more weeks before the new year begins, the work gears have to start churning into momentum. the thing is, the ticking of the count down to year end deadline is so loud and urgent that it drowns out the jingling bells of christmas festivities.

in anycase, i have to hold on to happy thoughts and plough through the grit.

In the name of Progress

To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress. No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year, it served with increased efficiency and deceased intelligence. The better a man knew his duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions. But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It has exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadance, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.

…

“I too have my troubles,” the friend replied. “Sometimes my ideas are interrupted by a slight jarring noise.”

“What is it?”

“I do not know whether it is inside my head, or inside the wall.”

“Complain, in either case.”

“I have complained, and my complaint will be forwarded in turn to the Central Committee.”

Time passed, and they resent the defects no longer. The defects had not been remedied, but the human tissues in that latter day had become to subservient, that they readily adapted themselves to every caprice of the Machine. The sigh at the crisis of the Brisbane symphony no longer irritated Vashti; she accepted it as part of the melody. The jarring noise whether in the head or the wall, was no longer resented by her friend. And so with the mouldy artificial fruit, so with her bath water that began to stink, so with the defective rhymes that the poetry machine had taken to emit. All were bitterly complained of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten. Things went from bad to worse unchallenged.

The Machine Stops

– E.M. Foster

(Full text here)

how christmas works

these days i often get asked, “what are you doing for christmas?” although christmas day last for only 24 hours , i don’t think the question pertains to only the 25th of december.

having two festive periods i.e. public holidays occurring within a week of each other (christmas and new year) it gives people the chance to take extended leave if not, at least allow productivity to slow down to a grinding halt and not be brought to task.

and when people have the opportunity to be collectively relieved of work, they come together to celebrate ‘non-work’ more than anything else. in the broadest sense, christmas for me is a month long celebration of love, friendship and thanksgiving, the chance to follow up with expressing appreciation in gift-giving and most of all, basking in the company of those who matter, all of which incidentally revolve around a lot of stuffing of face.

Christmas is a time for… bad copywriting

and the best of the worst three captions goes to

Bio-essense for say no “bread face”!

Osim for iGift uHealthy

and finally, Risis for Meaningfully Asian