xmas eve

Christmas comes, and Singaporeans find it fitting to throng down to the city area on 平安夜, where most of the "atmosphere" seems to be. Perhaps they find it fun to take in the sights and sounds of the lights at Orchard Road? Perhaps they want to inhale the "aromas" hanging around Orchard Road as thousands of people without deodorants pack the whole pedestrian mall? Perhaps they crave contact as elbows and shoulders jut out bashing their way through the "people mountain people sea"? I have yet to find out...

Anyway, favourite haunts like the Esplanade, Merlion, Canning Park were seriously packed this year, every bench taken, every possible ledge occupied, every bit of concrete on the ground filled with Singaporeans. Kinda an anticlimax, since we expected the city area to be quiet and tranquil. This year however, some enterprising suppliers found it fit to bring it millions and millions of cans of fake snow i.e some foamy concoction and sell it in the streets of Orchard Road. Result was "foam wars" erupting everywhere with teenagers randomly spraying the young, the old, the fat, the thin, the tourists, the locals with foam, and them chasing other groups of youths down Orchard Road like a gang war erupting.

And when the bells of midnight tolled, EVERYONE took out their foam cans and started spraying each other as a form of celebration. Luckily I was smart enough to drag my friends into the MRT station just moments before midnight =p

Christmas eve is called 平安夜 for a reason. What may be fun to some of us may be foolish to the families who brought all and sundry down to Orchard Road to admire the Christmas decorations and went home with their hair filled with foam. Or the unlucky guy who was driving his convertible down Orchard Road and went home with his whole car filled with foam. Leave the foam to the foam parties at Sentosa. Perhaps Christmas eve this year was a case of too much enthuasism among teens. I would have been much happier somewhere quieter. Perhaps somewhere like Mount Faber (=p). Or by the coast. Or at a park somewhere in suburbia. Or even at a void deck.

Whatever the case, there are some sights and sounds worth travelling to the city during Christmas eve. Firstly, the live bands at the Esplanade promenade, where live bands will perform. And then to St Andrew's Cathedral to hear the bells toiling. Admiring the gigantic christmas tree in front of Raffles City. Or just hopping onto a Citybuzz and watching the Orchard Road lightup in the comfort of an Air-con double deck bus while you watch the thousands of people down there =p

Peace out

erjian came, saw, blogged