Christmas : Province Version

The past few weeks have been wonderful. Unlike my "no-cook", boring life in Manila, my life in our sleepy province is the exact opposite - we still have no fastfood restaurant, so we really have to learn how to cook but no one still wants to eat what i cook; we only have one internet shop and it closes at around 5pm which is a good excuse for not having read any work-related emails; and we have no "entertainment" venue so people are very creative when it comes to inventing occasions to celebrate. Some of these i was also creative enough to escape, especially the weddings when i know that people will be making a big fuss of my unmarried state blah blah blah. I already have a standard reply when asked when i'm getting married, "perhaps tomorrow, its already getting late," then i'd smile and stare at my watch then excuse myself to find my missing sister. Its the best technique so far so i always ask her to sit away from me.

My little cousins have this curious habit of pointing at one another while sobbing barely understandable he-snatched-my-toy rants so I also did a lot of refereeing and broke the rule on chocolate bribing to settle the riot. I still believe that, for sanity's sake, children should be taught to walk by the time they're 7 ...with the onset of reason.

Anyway, during quieter times, i finished Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, both by Khaled Hosseini. Both are moving tales set in Afghanistan but i especially liked Kite Runner, perhaps because of its appeal to emotion hahha. It's not Nobel Prize writing material, and sometimes, i can't stand the use of he-killed-the-engine phrase. I don't know, perhaps the maggot in my brain causes it to short circuit when i read that phrase. But his style makes imagining all too easy. A Thousand Splendid Suns is better read in cheerful mood, i shouldn't have read it over Christmas. Its a bit too Hollywood-ish in style .I was just telling Kate that it's like titanic - its cinematically good but i won't subject myself to another seemingly endless tale of tragedy. Kite Runner's tragedies are, in most cases, unexpected, which makes it a bit more interesting. Maybe the appeal of the unknown?

We're now back in the office and last week was adjustment period again. Day 2 and i started hearing complaints of headaches, muscle pains, back aches and whatever possible aches. Kate said that this year, our sign is one of the few "unluckiest" so she's been feeding me many information to break the curse . Horoscope is one big business but it's still fascinating how people react to predictions.