When I was small, I thought the Christmas in the western countries was like, the shopping malls were crowed with people busy on shopping, the shops were decorated with Christmas Trees, Christmas decorations and illuminations; streets were covered by snow, children were playing with snow and some built the snowman in the playground, people wearing in festive color especially with the red Santa hats, singing Christmas song here and there, the noise of joys were coming relentlessly from your neighborhoods...
Well, there's the power of TV, make your childhood believe everything shown on the TV is true. And today, I celebrated my first Christmas in the western country, in a city with the most student in the Europe (told by someone but not sure whether this is true...), the Manchester. As you can imagine, most of the residents, the students, have gone back to their home in other cities or other countries for vacation, and therefore the city was very very very quite, even the pubs that used to be noisy in the weekdays were closed and the whole city was in terrifically peace...
No shops open on the Christmas day, even at the busiest shopping district, Arndale. The shop that I found open today in the city was Spar, a convenience store. People walking on the street were mostly Asian face like me. I think they might also wondering where the hell of all the people gone. Shouldn't people come out and celebrate in the festive season???
Still waiting for my first snow in Manchester. But unfortunately instead of snowing, the city raining as usual. So, my anticipated White Christmas was more towards a Grey Christmas...Never thought that I will hate raining so much...As in Malaysia, the rain bring the cool breathe to the hot weather, so I doubted people associate rain with bad weather...Well, I fully appreciate this association now. Yes, rain means freezingly cold, wetting your shoes and socks, made you feel uncomfortable to walk on the street...
So, how I feel about my first Christmas in the western country?
Well, not so bad actually. Had a wonderful petite Turkey Christmas eve dinner with my wife, strolled on the people-less Manchester's streets (happen only on Christmas day), relaxed at home with Nescafe and a chocolate cake bought from Spar, played iPad games, planned for next year Europe trip, and now writing this blog. Everything is so calm, peace and relaxing...so what can you ask more?
Still anticipate for a White Christmas?
Of course! But may be in other cities. After the boxing day, I have planed a trip to Inverness, the north most city of UK...hopefully what fall from the sky will be snow instead of rain.
