Christmas eve miracles

What little festive cheer I had this year happened on Christmas Eve and Christmas.

For Christmas Eve, I was given a half day off. Initially wanted to do some last minute shopping, but it occurred to me that everbody would have thought the same thing. No, no, no, I don't want to be shoving around with everyone else.

So what I planned to do something different, something no one else would be doing, something ..... boring but needs to be done.

I had a dental appointment at 3 p.m. and facial at 4 p.m. Both of them have been delayed long enough, with the usual reason of No Time.

On Christmas Eve morning itself, I was thinking hmmm what should I do between 1 and 3 p.m.? Aha, I shall go to the bank .... the blood bank to be precise.

It was a pretty last minute decision and I was worried that I might not be able to make it for either the dental or the facial appointment. Usually, blood donation takes almost 1 and a half hours.

But with the spirit of Christmas in the air, I was in and out of the bank in an hour! No, there wasn't less donors or they took less blood; there were more nurses that day. They probably should have done this more often.

Hence, I finished my good act for the day at 2.30 p.m., went to the dentist and came out at a quarter past three. I even have time to squeeze in a late lunch and then stroll to my beautician at 4.

Usually, my facial takes almost 2 hours. But it's Christmas eve after all, so another miracle happened. I had my black pores extracted and mask taken out in 90 minutes! I do hope the quality has not gone down. Thankfully, my face is not for the worse.

I was headed for my dinner appointment with the gang. It was at Charcoal, a restaurant run by trainees hospitality students. When I made the reservations, I was told that there would be ala carte and a Christmas set menu on the day. I was also informed that the set cost $23.

On the 23rd, I was told that there was no ala carte menu for Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve, I found out that the Christmas set cost $52.

Hey, enough with the miracles already!

Anyway, we ain't gonna pay so much for dinner. It's Christmas eve, not Valentine's day for Christ sake. We just wanted to have a nice dinner without paying an arm and a leg.

Hence, we decided to change our dinner venue to this place called Aerin's at Raffles City. The food was pretty decent and the portion was sufficient. The latter depends on what one orders though.

After the meal, I watched Bedtime Stories starring Adam Sandler. Pretty formulaic feel good end-of-the-year kind of movie. There were some laughs here and there. Pretty good for a couple of hours of escapism. I would rate it a 2.5 out of 5.

And so that was how my Christmas eve went.