christmas whats wheres whos

despite warnings to start xmas shopping & writing early this year, ive done it again.

its been a mad 4 days as i try hard to squeeze in every possible lil' bit of shopping & plotting into every lil' spare moment of the day. at the start of this wk, i looked at my (ever-expanding) gift & card list & realised its almost an impossible task to make it by xmas given how stupidly ive packed lunch & evening appts everyday. talk abt lack of foresight!

so ive been going around shopping areas looking dazed & flurried. distractedly planning, scritchscratching, scribbling away at my post-it every moment, everywhere - on the mrt, walking through the mall, in the middle of work, as im about to fall asleep. suddenly ill rem someone else i need to buy for OR realise the perfect gift for who&who after knitting my brows & knotting my brains the entire day.

all this time, you plan the routes to maximise efficiency & for the operation to run like clockwork, like a supermarket sweep. Enter, grab. Enter, choose colour, grab. You cant afford a hiccup in the plan like the scenarios below cos it would mean your route is disrupted. It would mean other gifts on the list get bumped to tomorrow’s lunch or evening! and if it’s a popular thing, a delay in the plan could mean a case of… *den den den den* NO MORE WHAT.

examples of hiccups

no more WHAT

- you think you settled on the what & you go to the where you expect the what to be brimming with hope & confidence. That is until they tell you, they RAN OUT of the what. ran out?! you scream. the what that you spent many hours thinking & musing about before finally deciding was perfect. You ask the where to call other wheres to check stock, meanwhile fretting like crazy for another WHAT or WHERE that might have the sth appropriate.

the WHERE disappoints

- you think that a particular where wld definitely have the what that the friend likes. You make elaborate plans (along lines of cancelling nutcracker plans or ditching the dinner kaki) to go to the where. To your horror, the latest season at the where sucks big time & you cant find a what for your lovely friend!!! You panic & realise this is gonna take more time than you assigned it.

know the WHAT, but don’t know WHERE

- you know the precise what that your friend wants. You look high & low for a good version of the what. you take time to shop around cos you want the what to be the nicest one (for the price youre willing to pay) you can find. You rank the whats that you see along the way except they are located at different places & cos your mind is flooded with many other whats to buy for whos, after the evening you forget where the #1 version of the what was from!!! And before you know it, youre back to square one.

such, is the madness of Christmas.

THANKFULLY, i have a brilliant gf who’s free to help buy some stuff & to my delight, some lunch dates have miraculously bailed - maybe they too have to scurry off to shop. hah! so i might still be able to make the deadline afterall :) *crossing fingers*

As I go through the exercise, I realise there are 3 categories of pple you buy gifts for:

i. dear close friends
- pple you hold dear & love muchie
- pple most likely to bother buying you gift too; even if they don’t, you don’t really mind
- you take a lot more time & effort to think of sth appropriate to buy
- you worry if they wld like it
- you want it to be meaningful, practical & sweet at the same time
- you want to see/know their reaction when they open the gift
- most time consuming & expensive category

ii. not so close but people you like
- pple you just got to know recently &/or think you’d grow closer to in time
- pple you are uncertain will buy you a gift but you don’t really mind either way
- you don’t want to stress them out by buying too expensive a gift
- you don’t know them well enough to buy sth personal/useful
- so you settle for a more generic gift & worry if they would like it or think its insincere
- you end up mostly buying same type of gift for the same range of category II friends
- you also could leave out buying for some in this category knowing they wont mind but you aim to write at least a card…
- medium difficulty but still expensive cos more pple fall in this category

iii. buy for the sake of
- pple you wont actually buy for but you do cos you cant leave them out in the circle of friends
- pple you guess might give you a present so you have to prepare one in case
- you do so cos you don’t want to hurt their feelings, avoid feeling paisey
- you buy spare gifts to buffer for this
- mostly colleagues fall into this category

okay so I exaggerated alittle to make the entry funny. Disclaimer: not everyone is classifiable cleanly into these 3 categories. There are many people that are impt to me but wont get a gift (just cos we don’t normally give each other, rite?). And there are people who I didn’t really set out to buy for, but I spot sth suitable/funny & decide to get it, just cos. SO! pls don’t open your pressie (or realise your lack of) and try to figure out which category you fall into k?

AND despite my whining, I really do enjoy giving gifts to my friends, loved ones lar. Its nice to express your appreciation of the friendship & even nicer to see the smile on his/her face. It creates what I call the warm fuzzy feeling effect. Its the reason I fuss so much.

Fuss aside, here’s wishing everyone warm fuzzy fuzz this Christmas as you celebrate the lovely season with the precious whos in your life! (and of cos the most precious Who of all -youknowwho!) ;)