Because of work and other life commitments, we decided to stay in Singapore this year for Christmas. This made it Jay’s third Christmas that he didn’t spend in Australia. This was a big deal, because it means it’s just the 3 of us spending the day together. Although this year, one of his cousins from Jakarta was staying with us, and even though he’s in his twenties, it still gave Jay someone else to play with.
Of course, in Australia we usually just spend Christmas day with my parents and my brother, so there’s no other kids for him to play with there either. But we do usually see some of my cousins while we’re there, and Jay gets to play with their kids.
Anyway, back to our Christmas in Singapore. It’s a completely different experience to what we have in western countries. Sure, they have some decorations up and you get sales and things, but I don’t remember ever seeing a Santa here. If they do have Santas here, it’s definitely not like Australia where you have one in every mall. In a lot of ways, you could live here all through December and not realise it’s Christmas at all.
We went grocery shopping on Christmas eve and it felt no different than any other time of the year, there wasn’t even any Christmas music playing. Just the regular sounds and goings on of a regular shopping day. Okay, there were crowds everywhere, but that’s normal for Singapore anyway. When we’re in Australia, my parents always complain about the crowds, but for us the malls there always seem empty in comparison to what we get here.
Christmas morning even seemed to lack the excitement and anticipation of our normal Christmas mornings. Jay woke up and went to play is games like any other day. We did have a special breakfast of ham and eggs, like we normally have in Australia. After that we did the presents, which did get Jay excited and he tore his apart and started playing with all his new stuff, including a microscope that fascinates him. I wonder if he’s going to grow up to be a scientist.
For lunch we had roast pork and salads. Remember that we live on the equator, a white Christmas here would mean the end of the world, so we have salads for lunch like we would’ve in Australia.
Over the course of the afternoon Jay played with his new toys, and I’m pretty sure he finished at least of of the new books he got from my parents. The rest of us just spent the time relaxing and not doing very much at all. Okay, that’s about the same as what we’d do in Australia, but we don’t have a pool at home here to do it around.
Since we’d been stuffing our faces almost constantly during the day, we had a relatively light dinner of ribs and some other stuff that was on my plate. And that was about it for our Christmas in Singapore. Nothing really special, but we spent the day together as a family and that’s what’s really important.
