What Santa (in Various Forms) Got Me

So this year my wishlist consisted of a belt and a man bag (aka shoulder bag). For Christmas my mum got me a belt, so that'll keep my pants up for a little longer. Thanks mum!

For Secret Santa, I got a red tie from Jessica, thanks Jessica!

Probably one of the most special presents I've been given came from Grace, who's an excellent artist. On Christmas Eve she gave me this awesome drawing of me playing the accordion! It really does look like me doesn't it?

Thanks Grace!

When she told me of her plans to draw me, I naively offered to draw her in return (forgetting the fact that I can't draw!) and she took me up on it, so this is what I did...does it look anything like her?

Now for the giving..

For Secret Santa, I gave Peter this Peanut with the caption 'Nuts About Physiotherapy' with the peanut being dressed in physiotherapist clothing, while holding an oil can and a spine+pelvis.

For my dad, I got a travel agent peanut (it was a two for one deal, and I couldn't just buy one!). I also got my mum some cookbooks so she could cook for me, but I don't think she liked those too much. She has too many books already, which is something I later realised.

For my brothers I got them a Coca Cola toilet paper dispenser, which I later realised actually says Cola Cola! My mum liked this one more than the cookbooks!

Finally, for the family I bought these six little white balls with different emoticon faces! I was originally going to buy one, but when I saw there was a whole set and was offered a discount, I couldn't resist!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The day is finally here! Hopefully you all have a great day of no shopping, Christmas-related-commercial-free TV and spending good quality time together with your family!

My annual tradition of sending out Christmas emails to people may not work as well this year with my laptop freezing on me every so often, so if I don't wish you a Merry Christmas it's not because I don't like you! ;) 

Thanks for putting up with me this year. I've enjoyed being friends with everyone I've known and have enjoyed the friendships I've made and the time I've spent with you guys. 

Next year will be a big change for me, moving onto full-time work but hopefully this doesn't change things between my friends and that I'll still be able to catch up with you all and stay in touch with you. 

Have a great holiday everyone!

(I'll post about the Calum-did-not-stuff-up-too-much-Christmas-play a little later!)

The Christmas Play Calum (Only Just) Didn't Screw Up

Tonight was finally the night we performed the Christmas play we had been practising for the past couple of months.

We had to arrive early at church to prepare, and as soon as I got there I had to get make-up on which took quite a while for me! They had to put all this stuff on my face and do things with my eyes. Is it always that...scary?

We forgot to bring our camera with us so Aonghas made a mad dash back home to pick it up. As he went back, we were informed that we had to play music in the foyer as people arrived for the play. We didn't have the music we played for the Sunday Christmas service, so we just grabbed hymn books off the shelf and played from the beginning of the book!

The hall was full and the show was soon about to start, so we had to rush off to our positions.

For those of you who don't know what the play is about, here's a brief summary (just remember that parts of it were in Chinese so it's not accurate!)

Desperate lonely girl (Jennifer) has no one for Christmas. All her friends have dates, are married, etc. etc. except for her. She wishes she could have a boyfriend. After many unsuitable guys court her, she finally finds the right guy (James). They get together.


They attend...Bible study class and learn about the birth of Jesus...

An Angel (Calum) tells Mary (Angie) that she is pregnant with Jesus (doll) and she breaks the news to Joseph. King Harrod (the Minister) finds out about it and isn't happy. Mary's water breaks and she gives birth.

That's pretty much an abridged version. I'm sure there are a few things I've missed out on, but I'm sure it'll be uploaded to the internet sometime.

I went upstairs to my balcony spot where I would appear as an angel. This time around I had printed my words in giant font on 3x3 A4 paper. There was no way I could screw it up this time!

I managed to say the first lot of my lines without mistake and even surprised some of the kids in the audience when I appeared! As soon as I was finished though I had to dash back downstairs into the hall to play my cello for the next scene.

The rest of the play went almost flawlessly. Ben accidentally missed his cue and didn't show up in one of the scenes he was supposed to!

We came to the final scene where all the people came to see the newborn baby Jesus. I almost tripped up on my lines, saying 'Messiah the God' instead of 'Messiah the Lord', but hopefully no one noticed!

After the play, the choir sang with the audience and everyone were handed candles to hold. There was a minor incident in the foyer where the candles were being lit, with a small fire breaking out (or so I heard...you could see a lot of smoke!). 

It was also only then that I realised the lapel microphone that I'd been using all this time in rehearsals and in the actual performance had an on/off switch, and it had been on 'off' the whole time! I was wondering why it never made a sound whenever I tapped it! I always thought it was just because they turned my microphone down whenever I wasn't using it!

While the singing was still going on, Grace gave me a really cool present which I will talk about in another post! 

Once it was all finished, everyone came out and enjoyed some snacks that had been prepared. 

For Oddfellows, we went back to the hall afterwards to receive our Secret Santa presents which had been put underneath the Christmas tree. People got pretty good presents. 

A lot of the girls got jewellery, soft toys and t-shirts, 

 while Aonghas and Hamish got a mug, one of the guys got a watch and I got a red tie, thanks Jessica!

I gave my Secret Santa Peter this physiotherapist peanut (he's studying physiotherapy), so hopefully he liked that. I had to make the box myself too!

Before the end of the night, we also presented Jenny with the bottle of grape juice that Jireh and I had bought the day before for her, for all her hard work in putting together our part of the play, directing us, and putting up with us all this time. She seemed genuinely surprised which is good!

It was a great way to kick off Christmas, and we didn't want to leave! All our work paid off and everyone seemed to enjoy it! 

(Thanks On for some of the photos! I tried taking some from the balcony when I wasn't in action but they all turned out blurry!)

Merry Christmas Eve!

It's one more day till Christmas Day! It feels like I've got a lot to do! I've got Christmas emails to send, a Christmas play to rehearse and perform in (and make sure I don't stuff up in!), a Secret Santa present I have to wrap (mummy help me!!)...

For some reason though, this year I haven't been feeling the Christmas spirit as much. I don't know why, whether it's too much commercialism, being too busy preparing for the Christmas play or what. Don't get me wrong though. I have to admit I sort of enjoy the hustle and bustle of last minute Christmas shopping with Christmas carols (even if some of the remakes are terrible!) blasting out of the shopping mall loudspeakers. I have enjoyed listening to Christmas carols though!

Every year I try to send Christmas emails out to everyone in my contacts just because it's a nice thing to do, it helps me reconnect with people I haven't talked to in a while, and also lets me 'express my true feelings'! No seriously, it allows me just to say nice things to others, something we should be doing a lot more than just once a year in an email. This year with people using their email addresses less or changing them without informing me, and being on Facebook, it's getting all a little too complicated and messy so I don't know whether I'll be staying up to type 200+ emails tonight. Last year I started texting some of the people, but that doesn't allow you to really say much though. There's also way too many people on Facebook to message every single one of them! I'll have to figure something out. I really don't like sending out mass emails as I know how it feels sometimes to receive a very impersonal email that has been sent to everyone (although I still do appreciate them nonetheless!).

Anyway I better get off and prepare for Christmas! Stay tuned to see whether I avoid publicly embarrassing myself tonight!

Surprise, Surprise

Today Jireh (one of my friends from youth group) and I went to West City to help buy a present for Aonghas's Secret Santa person since he's been working everyday for the last week and hasn't had a chance to. I have to say his person is quite difficult! Either that, or maybe I haven't gotten to know him as well as I'd like. I'll have to do something about that next year! We also went to get a small 'thank you' present for Jenny, a girl in our youth group who has been in charge of sorting out our youth group's part in the Christmas play. 

You may remember me blogging about her keeping us in check earlier on. I admit I've felt a little bad as I've been a bit of a bad boy and have been joking around a lot, not to mention screwing up my lines in nearly every rehearsal, so I thought it would be a nice gesture to present to her a 'thank you' present on behalf of the whole youth group for all the excrement and stress she's had to put up with in the past couple of months. She probably doesn't read this so it won't ruin the surprise! 

West City was so packed, which is no surprise considering it is Christmas Eve Eve. I ended up being lazy and drove down the road to the mall to meet Jireh because I didn't want to get sun burnt, but I almost didn't find any car parks and just managed to find one on the very top level near the staff car parks! 

Anyway, we were originally thinking of getting her chocolate, but then we saw a bottle of grape juice was at a reasonable price (and both of us are on tight budgets right now!) so we got her a bottle of that. Directors are usually presented with a bottle of bubbly at the end of the final night anyway aren't they?

As for Aonghas's Secret Santa present, well after several hours of wandering around we couldn't find anything we thought would be good and decided to leave it up to Aonghas! We just had a man-chat at the food court before we had to go home to prepare for rehearsal later that evening.

We had our final run-through of the Christmas play later that night after we all had dinner together at church, which consisted of takeaways from a nearby...takeaway. I bombed pretty badly with my lines in the first run-through, but I have good excuses! OK maybe not in the first scene when I just completely lost it after a few sentences. In the last scene when I have lines to say though, I had a few people come upstairs with me and Ben was getting me to go through my lines and I missed my cue! People down below were calling out 

"Angel! Wake up!!!" 

I quickly bobbed up and said my lines without mistake and I'm pretty sure in time with the music!

In the second run-through I managed to get through my lines in the first scene more or less without mistake. I even didn't screw up any of the cello sound effects I had to make! When it came to the last scene though, I was with some other people upstairs *cough* Amy and Antonia *cough*, who were playing with my phone, trying to get into my text inbox. My phone then locked itself and asked for the PUK code which is scary! I quickly ran down and went on the net on Aonghas's phone to find it and enter it into my phone to unlock it. By then it was almost my scene and I had to run back upstairs and say my lines! Luckily I managed to improvise a bit instead of making weird sounds come out of my mouth!

I always do better the second time round, so tomorrow night I'll have to make sure I get it right the FIRST time round!