Humbugis Market

One of the main reasons I readily agreed to coming out to Asia for work was that it meant I would miss out on all that horrific build-up to Christmas. You know what I mean. Queueing for forty minutes in Boots to buy a sandwich because some fuckwit old granny has decided that every single one of her great-grandchildren has to have matching hot water bottle covers with reindeer on. Getting rained on as you push children out of the way to get to the tube station. Fucking office fucking Christmas fucking parties.

(I believe that's happening some point this week, so have a great time everyone - sorry I couldn't be there. I do love Secret fucking Santa.)

There was one thing I didn't take into account. Despite the fact that my hotel room has a copy of the Wisdom of Buddha rather than a Gideon Bible, they do indeed appear to "do" Christmas in Asia after all. Just worse. Imagine the nastiest Christmas song you know. Let's take Jingle Bells for example. Now imagine it in Singlish (English but with half the words wrong). What was annoying to start with now becomes (in your best accent please with a nice jangly musak accompaniment):

Dashing through some snow
One horse on the sleigh
Through some fields we go
We laughing hey hey hey!

Oh for fuck's sake. Every sodding shop. My least favourite (and this is a tough competition) was The First Noel being played on continuous loop at Bugis Market. And when I say continuous loop, please let me remind you that The First Noel is the only arsing song in the entire bastarding universe where the irritating chorus sounds exactly the same as the bollocking verse. IT DOESN'T NEED REPLAYING. Not that I'm angry. I'm Zen-like, me. I could have written that little Buddha book. But I couldn't be arsed. Too zen.

My hotel has a giant Christmas tree and a jazz pianist hired to play cheery Christmas songs at me, as I shuffle past scowling. Christmas lights are all over the place. They are holding Christmas parties at the hotel every day this week. Badly.

Still, I got to push a small child out of the way on the MRT (tube) this evening. And it was raining. So I'm still thinking of home.