Fairytale of New York

My relationship with Christmas is odd, to say the least.  It’s a strained, sometimes idyllic and oftentimes bitter thing we got going on. I, being the child of claymation specials and Charlie Brown Christmas, am perpetually excited for Christmas time. I play Christmas music in July in anticipation and I inundate myself and usually everyone around me with holiday cheer. Gingerbread cookies? Check. Christmas cards? Check. Caroling? Check. But every year, since I was about seven or eight, Christmas always fails me. I always hope for a big Home Alone-esque Christmas where there’s a huge family epiphany that we all love each other, and I get what I materially and emotionally wish for. But each year I just get depressed come Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I compare Christmases, it’s stupid, I know but I can’t help it. Coming from a group of friends who all have Norman Rockwell and Bing Crosby, true-blue Americana Christmases it leaves very little room for my Asianified stoic Christmas. I am Santa’s biggest fan and the Grinch all rolled into one.

But somehow each year my faith in Christmas is replenished, holiday scars fade and Christmas and I begin anew. So this year’s Christmas was no different–big hopes, little faith. 

This year I spent Christmas with my aunt and uncle in Spa, Belgium. And I had no idea what to expect and it turned out unorthodox but great. I ate Christmas Eve Dinner, which consisted of a half fondue half grilled meal, with my aunt, uncle, cousin and her boyfriend before going out clubbing with my cousin until about 4AM. I spent Christmas Day making phone calls, checking Facebook, eating salami and cheese sandwiches, and watching TV online–an otherwise typical day in my life. And surprisingly I wasn’t depressed, a tinge of sadness here and there, but overall much better than any Christmas in a long time. And then I realised that it was because I didn’t have any expectations and therefore none were not met. I was just happy to be able to spend it with my (extended) family and enjoy my time left in this fantasy adventure I’ve been having abroad. I think, if nothing else, being abroad has taught me to be grateful for the here and now–new friends, new places, new experiences–that all go as quickly as they came. So for now, Christmas and I are on good terms and hopefully I’ll remember this revelation come this same time next year.

Factoids:

The title of this blog comes from the song by The Pogues about a very unconventional and oddly endearing Christmas scenario. Despite its happy melody, the lyrics are a bit dark and remind me of sad Christmases past and better ones to come–its my new favorite Christmas tune.

Boxing Day, December 26th, is named thus because traditionally the day after Christmas churches would open the alms boxes and the proceeds would be distributed to the poor and the needy.

There are volunteers who live in the North Pole who answer letters to Santa each year. It warms my heart and makes me want to move there.

Happy Christmas y’all.

Fly like Paper, Get High like Planes.

After a ridiculous coach ride from Norwich, which included a two and a half hour delay in standstill traffic because a fifteen foot patch of freeway was being repaired, I finally made it to Manchester. I was tired, my luggage was heavy, and it was raining (what else is new?) but it was so nice to see a friendly face at the station.

I stayed with Nick, a friend I met at my London Orientation in September, for the next six days. Nick lives in Chandos Hall, a dorm about a fifteen minute walk from the city center, L flat. Words cannot describe how pleasantly surprised I was by Manchester and all it had to offer. The week was a blur of cigarette smoke, excessive amounts of wine, paper airplane making contests, and all around laughter. We spent late nights you-tubing and talking, mornings lazily sleeping in, afternoons strolling through the city and nights making dinner.

My favorite night by far was my last night there. Since a good portion of their flat was heading home for the holidays, myself and Nick included, we all decided to make a Christmas roast dinner. Now, this suggestion had been made earlier in the week and I had doubted that it would come to fruition but come it did and with what a bang. A hurried trip into town, against the wind and the sleet, we pooled our resources and bought two small turkeys, stuffing, parsnips, carrots, potatoes and an assortment of other holiday fare.

Two checklists, lots of peeling, chopping, boiling, dicing, mixing, washing, joking, picture-taking, cigarette smoking, music playing and three plus hours later dinner was on the table. And what a dinner it was.

With my first ever Christmas crackers and crowns and an enormous helping of food and alcohol alongside good music and great friends it felt more like home and Christmas than I have felt in a long time and I’m so grateful that I could be a part of the first, in probably a long line of, Chandos’ Christmas dinners.

I also spent a good chunk of time there meticulously folding and engineering paper planes. Much to my delight, they invited me in on their little craft competition. Each day Luke would visit each floor and steal the latest adverts, huge posters, flyers from clubs, warnings and notices from campus security–you name it, it was fair game–and bring them back to L flat’s kitchen as prized paper plane making goods. And what fit airplanes they made, bombers to stealth fighters to rocks that fell out of the sky, each taking his fateful turn releasing said planes out the window, hoping against all odds for a good flight. Most ended up careening into the side of the building or falling head over heels towards the ground but occasionally there would be a gust of wind, and a shout and off that little sucker would fly. Really, there’s nothing better than a well-executed flight. I’ll miss it.

I was only there a few days but I felt like I had become a part of their clan and was really sad to go and see them go. But what can you do? Hopefully I’ll see them again and we’ll once again attempt to fly monstrously ambitious kites and other non-aviation worthy things, like leftover turkey carcasses and bags of flour, out the eleventh floor window.

paul.adam.jarvis.luke.nick.moi.aylin.

Oh UEA.

After a week of fretting about final papers and projects and dreaming about the day it would all be over, it’s here. My last day in Norwich. It is an unbelievable feeling–surreal, to say the least.

I had 5,000 words and a project due today. I planned, calculated and told myself I would stay on schedule and finish promptly so I could enjoy my last days here. Nothing of the sort happened. Only after I had watched the first and second season of Gossip Girl, start and finished two books from the Noughts and Crosses series, cooked myself meals from scratch every day of the week, took long hot water exhausting showers, chatted endlessly on facebook and sat on skype, did I start the formidable task ahead of me. Suffice to say the last couple of days have been miserable. Between doing work and worrying about packing and saying goodbyes, I was in a rotten mood.

But today is a new day; the metaphorical clouds have cleared, the grumpy gray ones in Norwich are still here, and I’m in a better mood. I spent my last full day in Norwich turning in my paper, mailing a ton of books home, packing up, strolling through town, hanging out with old and new friends, and just reminding myself what an amazing adventure this has all been. I took a little time out to just walk around campus, take a few parting pictures and breathe in a little bit more of clean air. I’ll miss it.

I’ll miss the people more. The flatmates, that experienced their first university term with me. Who stayed up and laughed with me in the kitchen, who included me in their ruckus nights, I will miss them dearly. To the people who took me in as honorary flatmates, I will be forever grateful. Letting me use your sleeping bag, occasionally eat your food and just letting me be a part of your flat was great. And thanks mostly to the people at home who kept me grounded, whether I was flying high or burrowing myself into a hole of self-pity and homesickness. I love y’all and I can’t wait to be back at home.

It’s 4:54 AM right now and I have about two and a half hours before I’ll be lugging my ridiculous suitcases down four flights of stairs onto a coach bound of Manchester. It’s weird that my room will be emptied, cleaned and cleared out for the next exchange student. I hope they have as good a time as I did. It’s a sad feeling really, knowing that I won’t ever live here again or see most of these people ever again. The finality of it all just hit me, like a double-decker bus. I hope to see them again, I honestly do, even if forty years down the road they happen to make their way to wherever I’m living or vice versa, I want to see them.

But for now, I need to finish packing up and eat and then start another leg of my journey. To Manchester, to Belgium, to Paris-Amsterdam-Paris, to HOME, I can and can’t wait.

Say What?

First off, y’all know how I’m ridiculously paranoid–checking underneath cars before I get into them at night, you know, for the people…hiding underneath…ready to slash your ankles–and this is where it comes from. My mother just sent me an email with this as its subject heading:

FW: A NEW KIND OF RAPE.

The “article” that follows is about how sexual predators are now using small children to lure women to their evil lairs. They put said children on the side of the road and tell them to act afraid, I’m sure if this was true the kids would actually be terrified, and then convince female passerbys to take them back “home” which is rapist code for cave of torture. Unlikely, I know.

But my mother, bless her, is so terrified that something might happen to any of us that she forwards this stuff constantly. Only to have my brother, almost instantly, reply to her with “Mom, it’s a hoax. Here [insert link disproving said cautionary email].”

In a less traumatic email, she told me about what my family did for Thanksgiving. And y’all know how much I love the idea of holidays, like gathering around with family and friends for some good stuffed turkey and mashed potatoes wearing silly construction paper pilgrim hats. But alas, no matter how much I desperately dream for those kind of holidays, I’m Asian, and I usually get Thanksgiving stir fry or hot pot.

But, oh cruel fates, the year I had to go to England for Thanksgiving–where the holiday doesn’t even exist–my family does Thanksgiving right. They had not one properly stuffed turkey, but TWO. How is that for irony?

Oi vey.

192 till D-Day.

I have eight days left before D-Day. And only nine days before my time at UEA comes to a close. It’s all sort of surreal, I can’t even begin to describe the mixture of sadness, relief, anxiety and excitement for the days to come.

Well, after Due Day that is. In the next 192 hours I have to finish my children’s cookbook project, an essay for my Chaucer class and an essay for my Freud class. But I’m actually enjoying my cookbook project. If y’all have been wondering why I’ve been bothering you about cookbook recipes and favorite food items from children’s stories, this is what it’s been for. I’m designing a mini recipe book inspired by children’s stories, ranging from the classics like The Little Red Hen to my absolute favorite–Matilda. Anyways, I’ve been steadily working on it so it shouldn’t be too bad and I’m actually really proud of it. So I thought I would share two of the pages.

Bread a la The Little Red Hen

I can’t wait to show y’all the finished product.

Until then though I have to try and finish the rest of this junk by December 11th and then I am home free. Well, kind of. After this I might be heading into London or going straight to Manchester for a couple of days before flying into Belgium for Christmas with my aunt and uncle. And then I’ll be with Erin’s family, in Paris and wherever else they decide to travel, until I fly home on the 2nd. So I’ll be home then.

I thought I would also mention that these projects wouldn’t be so difficult to get done if it wasn’t for these recent developments.

I am now partially nocturnal.

I am entrenched in a book series I just found–Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman.

And worst of all, I am completely consumed by the high-sheen, fast-paced, beauty that is Gossip Girl. It’s horrible, I know.

Wish me luck people.