Twas the day before Christmas, and at 10:30 AM, the big boss Patrick Huang sent an email, giving me two reasons to smile. The first reason was his name. No, it’s not a funny name, I just find it amusing that it sounds so much like the name of the big boss of the company I left, that name being Patrick Wong. The body of his email gave me my second reason: “Today Christmas Eve will be a shortened business day in order to encourage the time with others. Therefore for staff who are not on shifts requiring them to stay may leave work today at 3PM or as arranged with their manager.” Okay, so it’s not a long vacation like in the Philippines, but I’ll take all that I can get.
The day before that, I attended my first non-Filipino Christmas party in Singapore. Our team joined forces with the team we work closely with and came up with a Christmas potluck lunch in our area. They asked me to bring Filipino food, since they so rarely get to eat those. I ended up making leche flan. Everyone asked me what it was supposed to be. I found this amusing as well, since back in the Philippines, no one has ever asked me that question. The others brought fish sambal, fruit-and-vegetable salad, pasta carbonara, roast chicken, chocolate log cake, Royce chocolates, ice cream, microwave pizza and Mediterranean rice. For the first time, I had pictures taken with them. We did not have the pinoy tradition of kris kringle, but people gave gifts to each other nevertheless. I gave them small towels designed to look like pastries, and I had a small pile of gifts under my desk’s “tree” at the end of the day. It was a very nice Christmas party, considering that not everyone in the group were Christians.
The Friday before that, my boss took her team out to a Swiss restaurant for lunch, where I had my fill of French onion soup, clams in white wine and garlic, chicken fingers, chocolate cake, and sirloin steak, well done, just like most Pinoys like it.
So yes, I definitely still feel the Christmas spirit in Singapore after all.
i couldn’t find your tagboard, so dito nalang:merry xmas!!!!!!! i hope you’re doing well there! 🙂