24-Dec-2025
As reported here, these are not the greatest of times for us, which means that interesting presentations and fun days out with friends become all the more precious.
Don't want to over-dramatize, but this feels very appropriate at the moment...
So, where are we?
Well, we've no clue what's happening with our house purchase, and we won't find out now until the New Year. So our Christmas is haunted by the concern that the whole thing has gone belly-up for some reason, and we'll have to start again. This is a little stressful.
We made some progress on the visa front (our current visa is now in our new passport), but we have to return to Immigration in the New Year to have it extended to cover the next three years.
My second and final root canal session went very painlessly.
And a bit more of our stuff has found a home:
Some goodbyes are sadder than others... This is Hugo, off on his travels
Still left: A chaise longue, two wonderfully comfortable recliners, a liquidizer, a pedestal fan, a phone stand, a couple of rugs, and a traditional yellow basket... Interested? Buyer collects.
Anything that doesn't sell, plus the tons of odds and ends that we didn't even attempt to sell, will be collected by the Salvation Army at a date to be arranged in January.
What else? Well, we could sum up most of the rest of this period under the heading Times and Seasons:
Rainy season moods
Whoa, looking a bit flat there, Santa...
Santas at Earthlings
Cute gingerbread house at Ember
Hup Ho
Tang yuan, glutinous rice flour balls, traditionally served at the Winter Solstice
There was one important bit of food news:
Pan mee!! It's always a big story when you find a new pan mee. This one is from Yes Cafe. Missing the mushrooms, but otherwise really good, with an excellent broth
And now it's Christmas Eve... We've been cleaning today, and there's still a bit more of that to do. You kind of feel the house ought to be spick and span for Christmas Day...
In a minute I'm going to make a stovetop version of golden pudding (the one with the coconut and turmeric). It has to be a stovetop version because we've sold the oven already. It will be drizzled with a ginger tuak sauce, though, and I reckon it's the perfect thing for this rainy afternoon.
I was very touched by something I read this morning. It's by poet Andrea Gibson, who died earlier this year. Clearly, they're referring to trials much more severe than the ones we're buckling under at the moment. Still, I reckon this applies to all the trials we experience in life, big and small:
I don't want to GET through this.
I want to love through this.
I want to grieve through this.
I want to laugh through this.
I want to scream through this.
I want to learn through this.
I want to open through this.
I want to grow through this.