Well, when I told everyone that we were going to have a Secret Santa on the 30th of December, they were like wtf? isn’t Christmas over already? I was like aiyahhh it’s ok. Who said you HAVE to celebrate Christmas during Christmas? Wouldn’t everything Christmas-sy be expensive then? If everyone celebrated different days not on those days, then we wouldn’t have to pay absurd amounts of money for say a stalk of rose, or minimum spend for a table at a club or restaurants, etc. Anyway, a celebration counts on the company you have, regardless if your company is your family, loved ones, colleagues, friends, or even just yourself. A celebration doesn’t count just because it’s celebrated on that day itself.

Anyway I think I side tracked too much (I’m writing this after having some baijiu with nuffies, will write more about this baijiu event on the next post), I should get back to Secret Santa. So since all the Nuffnang countries (well, Malaysia and Singapore at least) always celebrate Christmas and exchanging gifts ala Secret Santa style, although I don’t necessarily agree on buying gifts to exchange with colleagues etc, it has always been a fun event. I think the most important thing is that this Secret Santa thing is not forced upon colleagues, but more like “sold” to them. Its only meaningful if they WANT to do it and not get forced to do it. So I asked if everyone was OK with this idea and everyone was up for it. So we all mutually decided on an amount that everyone of us thought was reasonable, which was RMB50, and went our ways to buy presents for each other.

On that day itself, it could really be seen that most of us did actually put a lot of thought into buying gifts for each other. It was happy seeing everyone got something that was something that they actually wanted, or liked, or represents them etc. Mashili got a set of English learning books from Julia because he kept saying he wanted to learn English, Rachel got a aromatherapy oil burner from Ningzhe that was flowned in on that day, because we all know she likes to do zen stuff, and relax, no “touristy” shit. Joyce would be named best wrapped present as she gave this awesome notebook wrapped super nicely to Ningzhe that he didn’t even dare to rip apart. And I, I got this awesome pair of leather gloves from Rachel that I was just so happen to talk to her about that day!

There are more but I can’t remember what was what already. All in all we had a great time with great food at a great price! We paid (well Nuffnang paid) RMB500 for the dinner we had for 10 pax because we had RMB400 of coupons that we could redeem! So it was a dinner for awesome value with lotsa fun.

Enjoy them pictures. Ok I’m going to pass out now stupid baijiu.