Real Christmas trees

I’ve been warned that gin­seng tea can be addic­tive. My dad told me and so did HT. They said, no won­der my eye­balls looked like they’ve been pop­ping out of my skull the past few days.

Christ­mas is well on it’s way, and at home, noth­ing is more indica­tive of the fes­tive sea­son than my mother’s increas­ing fre­quency of tantrums. She is on a tirade that will last a month and into the twelve days of Christ­mas. We now have a Christ­mas tree that’s real, and we have to keep the air-con on so it doesn’t die before Santa arrives and has to put presents on top of a bunch of twigs. Mum also arranged for land­scap­ers to come and plant thirty (yes, 30) trees along the south­ern fence to beau­tify the new neighbour’s ugly new fence. At $30 a tree, not cheap.

She’s also got­ten the maid to do major house­clean­ing, and that means the net­work of drains are cloroxed so mold doesn’t grow on them for a while. Then she tells me not to buy Clorox any more because that’s what maids use to poi­son their employers.

I can­not talk Ryan out of his frus­tra­tion. There’s noth­ing I can do in that depart­ment. The only thing that will save him is the love of a good woman. And the only way I can help with that is to help con­vince young, nubile and intel­li­gent women to vol­un­teer for this oner­ous sacrifice.

I have a cousin that’s host­ing a wed­ding din­ner in KL on the 11th of Jan­u­ary. Prob­lem is, I have to be in camp at 7.30am on the 12th. I could make the din­ner, but I think I’m a lit­tle too old to be rush­ing back from KL in the dead of night just to make it back to camp on time. Tough but not impos­si­ble ask if I were twenty, but not when I’m no longer twenty, ahem. Yes, it’s that time of year again. Reservist. That mix of dread and antic­i­pa­tion. That unsolv­able mys­tery of los­ing equip­ment even though you thought you put it in your cup­board the last time you came back from camp. So fun.