It's Christmas.
My family isn't Christian, so we don't go for Mass or celebrate Christmas as the day Jesus Christ was born. But we do celebrate Christmas in the sense that we use the occasion to exchange gifts and spend some family-bonding time together. Christmas is therefore always a simple affair for us. This year for instance, we had a nice Christmas dinner at home on Christmas Eve, then on Christmas itself, we opened our presents and went out for a delicious Pizza Hut lunch at a nearby heartland mall. It was a merry Christmas for me indeed, and I hope everyone else had a merry Christmas too.
That today is Christmas has made me realize how close the end of 2011 is approaching. It's been quite an eventful year, for both the world and me. The world saw a few very serious and tragic natural disasters, political revolutions ignite in several countries (including, to a very small extent, Singapore) as well as the deaths of dictators, the world's most infamous terrorist and the well-respected CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc. On the personal front, I went on exchange to the UK, legally became an adult and embarked on my third year in university (plus a few other personal issues that I won't discuss here).
I read in the BBC recently of a couple of national polls, one conducted in China and the other in Japan, that asked people to sum up 2011 in a single character. The top pick for the Japanese was kizuna (meaning bond or connection) and the top pick for the Chinese was kong (meaning control) - you can read more here and here. I reckon if I were to speak for the world, Singapore and myself (and hence I am speaking very, very broadly here), the word I'd use to sum up 2011 would be awakening. Awakening in the sense of maturity, and of trying to seize and forge one's future.
Well, this is probably going to be my last post of this year, as I will have little time to blog next week. I will certainly be back next year, to capture and record the unique moments in space and time 2012 will bring.
Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday Jesus and have a wonderful rest-of-the-year-ahead!
