Christmas in Singapore V - The DHL Christmas Game

Hola, I promise that this is the last entry about the Christmas in Singapore.

As I am working in the marketing department, we needed to do some fancy thing for the holidays, so we made this very cool game :)

With this I wish you a Merry Christmas and hope you enjoy playing this game:

http://www.dhl.com.sg/christmas2005/sg/card.html

I played several times as I was the "tester", and I really enjoy it. I can play it for hours :) The music is cool as well in the game :)

Christmas in Singapore IV - How did I celebrate Christmas?

The first Christmas party for me was on the 2nd of December. This was a party with the whole commercial department of DHL. We started with a huge lunch followed by some toasts and a beer sculling competition. Of course the team full with @ interns and top management won :) Asians are bad in beer sculling, and of course our training and experience counted a lot :)

And we had some parties with the advertising agency and with the media agency and with the embassy and with the newspapers who invited us and I can't even remember how many Christmas parties and lunches I have attended...

On the 24th I felt very screwed. It was just weird to realise that it is Christmas and I am not home in my small little snowy town but in Singapore in my room. It was weird just to realise that most probably I will spend Christmas alone. I just felt very lonely. So I just went swimming, so at least I could feel a little bit better. And after that I have cleaned my room and the house so at least I can feel the Christmas preparation as well and I put my nice little Christmas tree on my desk (thanks Fayy for giving me this nice tree). I called my mom, but instead of feeling better, I felt even more depressed, as she was crying and it was just very depressing. At least I sent home a lot of presents...

I tried to watch a pathetic Christmas show on the TV but it did not help, so I called my friends just to meet and do something. We went for a nice Christmas dinner and to forget we really spent some money :) It was funny to talk with the other interns who felt the same... We take a bold step to change the situation and we said that we go in a club, so at least we will have a lot of people around us and we won't feel alone.

Clubs in Singapore are not really holy places and there is not much of a Christmas and family spirit there but I think that it was a good decision, because that bad feeling of being alone for Christmas disappeared. We went to Insomnia (a typical meeting point of cultures), I will write about Singaporean clubs later) and we had a great party :):)

On the 25th I just woke up really late and went to the swimming pool again. I was swimming, reading and enjoying the sun. It was really relaxing and I really enjoyed it. In the past period I had a very hectic period at work and I was always very stressed, so I really enjoyed this relaxation.

Later Luis, Albert, Irina, Nacho, Parki and a nice Singaporean girl came over for dinner. Luis was cooking and mainly Albert was helping him out while me and Irina was watching a nice movie (Snow in April). We had a very nice dinner again and it was just a good feeling to have such a great company for the second Christmas dinner. After the big eating ceremony and hot wine drinking ceremony some played some weird game and I was watching again movies with Irina. We had a really great evening.

Today is the 26th and I decided to be active. I started with swimming ( a lot of swimming heh?) and after that cleaning the house after the party. And now I am writing all these experiences in Singapore as I have time to do it. There are so many things to write and so many experiences, just that I do not have always the time.

Christmas in Singapore III

Christmas in Singapore seems to be a big event. If you roam around the city, everything is decorated for Christmas with two months before. By default Singapore is not a Christian country, there is a small minority of Christians and the majority are of those are expats. Still in Singapore the whole country looks like a big Christmas tree? Why? Well, it is a good occasion for shopping, Christmas sales, Christmas parties... It is a big business, it is working well, therefore why not to have it?

And all the huge malls have a huge Christmas tree which attracts people to buy some more things they don't need anyway.... Even on the TV on Christmas eve there was a cheap Christmas show. It was just funny... I can't categorize otherwise....

However the non-Christian Singaporeans do not celebrate Christmas in their homes. Besides the shopping there is not much happening. They just go out in the town and make a lot of pictures with Santa Claus (we are in Asia at the end of the day) and they go for a party in one of the many clubs here. Some might gather for a dinner with the family, but they do not have a Christmas tree and they do not exchange gifts.

It is interesting, outside you can find all these Christmas trees and decorations, but in the houses they keep their traditions and do not let in the western commercial Christmas.

Just one more funny link which summarizes what Christmas is in Singapore:

http://www.syfc.org.sg/christmas05/12days.htm

(play from the 12th day backwards to the 1st)

And if Christmas is over, in one day the whole country changes, the Christmas decorations disappear and the Chinese New Year decorations appear. New reason for shopping, new reason to party and spend some money.

Anyway for two days after Christmas there are the final sales of the year, they get rid of everything they couldn't sell for Christmas, so all the people in the town, attack the malls :) Everything is damn cheap :)

Christmas in Singapore II - The Hungarian Embassy Rocks

Christmas is a very weird period, cause if you are far from home, you want to reconnect with your own culture and do all those kind of "Christmas thingies" that you always do at home.

The Hungarian embassy helped me in this in two ways:
- They sent a nice postcard signed by all the employees of the embassy, a postcard which was in Hungarian and with a very nice design :)

- They organized a get together tonight. There were just few people (most of the others went home) and it was very homey:) We drunk hot wine with cinnamon and ate some great food and had some nice conversations. I remembered all the good times when I used to do this back home, getting together with friends, drinking hot wine and discussing the most interesting topics, dreaming about how we change the world. It was great :)

A piece of home feeling for a few hours :):):) Anda piece of real christmas feeling, not the fake christmas feeling of Singapore...

Thank you Hungarian embassy, you rock.

Christmas in Singapore I

Christmas in Singapore is very funny and very unique... very Singaporean :)
Just watch this small flash....:

http://www.syfc.org.sg/christmas05/hokkien.htm

I am from Transylvania :):):)

There is one question which I find really hard to answer in Singapore. And this question is: “Where are you from?’. If I say I am from Romania, then people associate with and ask about Mutu (Most of Singaporeans watch the English soccer championship and they recall him, as he was playing at Chelsea). However the most annoying thing is that they start saying, so “Attila the HUN” was Romanian, as they associate my name with Attila the HUN. So after a few cases like this, I started to say I am Hungarian from Romania. Now that’s very confusing for them and I always have to enter in a long History lesson with long explanations about how it is possible to be Hungarian in Romania.

Now I changed my introduction line and I always answer “I am from Transylvania”. It is the best line I ever could invent for Asians. It is like saying “ I am Bond. James Bond”. It is just magical. People find it very mysterious; they show much more interest in knowing more about how my home is. And I can really share where I am from and what is my culture and historical heritage. And for young ladies ….. it is the best pick-up line :):):) So Transylvanians….in Asia you will be the “James Bonds”!!!!!

Lord of War

Just after reading the Economist article about Sudan, I saw a fantastically well made movie with a fantastic topic: Lord of War. It is a movie about something we all know that it is happening; just nobody said it so loud and clear. It is about arm trade and about the financing of the wars around the world.

Coming from a fairly corrupt country is not that shocking to see how the system works. It is shocking to see how those people think and act….

The story is based on real fact, and it is about and arm dealer who starts with selling one gun and with time becomes the biggest freelancer arms dealer in the world, his arms being used in 8 out of the 10 biggest wars. Through his eyes and thinking we can get very good insights in how this arms dealing functions, the rules and principles of this business and some consequences of this trade. He has some very good comments through the movie which are available on the movie’s website as well….

I think if you are a person who really wants to know how this world functions, you have to see this movie. But again…. you can see thousands of ads for Chicken Little, but not for a movie like this….

Failure in Sudan….

There was an excellent article about the Failure in Sudan in the last week’s edition of The Economist. Some figures catched my attention….. 2 million people died in the civil war in the last 3 decades and many more millions were displaced. In terms of casualties, it is like having an earthquake in Sudan just like in Pakistan every year, or a tsunami every 3 years…. But in terms of media coverage you can’t even compare these ….. You don’t her about Sudan…There have been global donation conferences for the earthquake, for the tsunami…. All big companies have been involved in the relief donating money…. A lot of countries donated money….. Which is impressive. The question is why only in those cases the world gets together which have a pretty huge media coverage? Why we ignore all the other catastrophes like in Sudan and in the many other parts of the world, where even more people die?

Why we focus only on natural disasters, but not on the disasters created by humans, like wars, poverty and illnesses? Of course I can pull out hundreds of explanations for these questions, they are more rhetorical….

I really would like to have a chat about this with the global leaders….. Mr Bush, Mr. Annan and the others, if you read my blog, you can post your comments!!!

Szeretlek!

:)