Bah Humbug. It's December again - 9 more days to Christmas

Bah Humbug, it's 16th December,.

And so the countdown continues. 9 more days to Christmas. 

Better fatten a turkey or a goose or something. 

I forgot to buy a Christmas pudding, but no one eats that here as the weather is too hot. Another tradition that I shall have to forego.

Talking of which, sprouts. Yes, sprouts. Those nasty little bundles of green cabbage-like stuff that smell like farts and give you gas. As if it wasn't enough that they smell like what comes out of the other end after eating.

I really detest them, not enough to stand on a soap box and demand that they be banned, but enough that I am rather thankful not to have Christmas with any of my immediate family who always insist on serving them.

Countless dinner times ended up with me being locked in the dining room, a plate of sprouts, or asparagus (that I rather like now), or the kidney bits in steak and kidney pie lying on a plate congealing into cold. All because I refused to eat what essentially created an allergic reaction in my mouth. Even the appearance of the spider's-web encrusted coal shovel could not entice me.

What is it about sprouts that makes us eat them at Christmas? They are reported to be the most hated vegetable in the UK and the US and the UK seems to grow more of them than anywhere else. I know there are many recipes out there from chefs famous and not so famous, all claiming to make the sprout tasty - but I simply cannot do it. Steam them, fry them, bake them, roast them, pour copious amounts of butter and honey over them - which sort of defeats the purpose of a healthy vegetable and annoys the bees - but I still simply cannot do it.

What is it about Brussels sprouts?

Sprouts, or correctly, Brussels sprouts are a member of the cabbage family, they are the sprout at the end of the stalk. Believed to date back to Roman times - gosh, then they should be called Roman sprouts, they began to be grown widely in Belgium and around Brussels in the 16th Century and that's how they got their name. I can't help thinking that the Romans may have used their powers for ammunition when they ran out of everything else ...

That leads very conveniently into the fact that they stink, not just smell, they pong! The excuse is that they stink when they are overcooked - you should only steam them for 5 minutes, but pick up a bag of uncooked Brussels and take a whiff! They smell.

The stench comes from something called,  glucosinolate sinigrin, a sulfurous compound that is supposed to fight cancer. OK so they are good for you. And the Chinese doctors prescribe them for digestive upsets. OK so they keep you going.

Brussels sprouts are packed with Vitamin C (more than an orange, but then again, most fruits have more vitamin C than an orange, we've just been media-hoodwinked into believing oranges = vitamin C). They also have a few other letters as well, Vitamin A (good for eyesight, so are carrots and they don't stink), and Vitamin K, but per 100g fresh parsley, basil and watercress all have more vitamin K than sprouts. I know which I prefer.

Ah ha! but wait, that vitamin K thing is not too good if you eat too much of it and you have high blood pressure, it can act as a clotting agent.

So there is a downside.

Which makes me wonder why a Swedish man, Linus Urbanec would even consider eating 31 Brussels sprouts in a minute just to get into the Guinness Book of World Records in 2008.

Gosh I am glad I wasn't in the same room as him.

As a parting shot - no pun intended, I leave your with a Spike Milligan Poem:

Norrington Blit,
Ate aught but grit,
Aught but grit and mussels,
Save for a bag of sprouts from Brussels,
Or was it Oldham?

BAH STINKY HUMBUG! 

There'll be no Brussels sprouts on my table this Christmas.

Foods high in Vitamin K

11 Things about Brussels sprouts

The benefits of Brussels sprouts

Photo of Brussels sprouts by Zsuzsanna Kilian of Budapest, (http://www.freeimages.com/profile/nkzs)

Photoshopped by me.

Bah Humbug. It's December again - 10 days to Christmas

Bah Humbug, it's 15th December.

The countdown begins. Not countdown like the TV game where you choose consonants and vowels or a sting of numbers, although it's a good game to play as it makes your brain work. The countdown as in NASA, get ready for the New Year countdown.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and finally 1.

Sigh, I am not sure whether I should be happy or worried. only 10 days to go.

I have decided to give thinking about it a rest. Not because I am going to do anything about it, but rather because I need to get on with my writing.

If I am going to stand a chance of ever being noticed as a brilliant author with a fantastic imagination and wit, then I need to get honing my skills.

What a profoundly expressive word - honing, like honey-ing - or covering in honey to make something sweet enough to eat.

Which brings me on to the subject of Bees, and not that terrible B movie that make my children cringe, but rather the fact that so many seem to be losing their sense of direction resulting in Colony Collapse Disorder, Vanishing of the Bees.

We focus on manipulating our crops, (although we've been doing that for centuries, just not quite at the DNA/molecular level), spraying everything with insecticide, and even leave old, foreign honey jars outside that contain bacteria that indigenous bees cannot tolerate.

So let's stop for a moment.

Why do we need these pesky black and orange things that really should not be able to fly, but they do because they believe they can (and they have helicopter wings).

We need our bees for so much that we take for granted in our world: the food we put on the table, fruit, vegetables, even meat needs plants, the plants and flowers that we admire, the clothes we wear, what would happen to the cotton plants? Honey has so many wonderful properties too, it is not just for pouring on toast. I even remember when I was younger my father making me a hot toddy of whisky, lemon juice, honey and hot water - to sooth my raspingly sore throat and help me sleep. A cup of honey, cider vinegar and warm water settles the stomach, and seal a wound with boiling hot honey.

Bees help give life and colour to everything around us.

Einstein is purported to have said that humans would have four years left if all the bees on earth disappeared. A sobering thought at Christmas.

So at this season of goodwill and giving, rather than frittering your cash away on trinkets and plastic that will eventually find their way to a landfill, invest in the future of our earth, our children and our bees. Buy someone a beehive, adopt a bee hive, you can adopt a bee hive through the British Bee Keepers Association, build a bee hive in your back garden, and if you can't do that, then donate to the research and initiatives to save our bees, just like we did last Summer in the UK as unfortunately, I have no space for a bee hive where I live.

Now there's a real reason or a few million to get buzzy about Christmas.


BAH BUZZ HUMBUG

There's tons on how to "bee" resourceful:

British Bee Keepers Association

Ten things to do to help bees

Why we need bees 

Why we need to stop pesticides to keep our bees

There's lots on bees in the Guardian

What bees do for us: Natural News

A step by step guide to keeping bees: Bee Keeping 101

Bah Humbug. It's December again - 11 days to Christmas

Bah Humbug, it's 14th December.

Where did the last two weeks go? Now I only have 11 days to left.

I always wondered why it couldn't be right instead of left. I mean what is wrong with that?

I digress. 11 days, that isn't even two weeks. I came home from shopping yesterday, tired and weary. I had to stand in a queue and mingle with too many people who were peri-gyrating around the shops.

Gosh I hate Christmas, what a Bah Humbug.

Today, I seem to have wasted half of it deciding whether to remove the capitalisation from the beginning of each line of Eric and the Volcano, or whether I should stand by my conviction of being a semi-purist poet.

That out of the way, I decided to try and unblock the semi-blocked kitchen drain. That really did not work.

Oh toilets! Bah Humbug, another waste of my time. 

Half the day gone ...

With that I gave up.

How can I feel "seasonal" when I am unblocking a drain in a t-shirt and shorts? Living in the tropics where the the weather is far from even semi-Christmassy - even when it rains, it just stays hot and sticky, which might seem nice, but not all the time - the only seasons are hot and rainy and not quite so hot and rainy.

Bring me a Christmas sweater. Then maybe I might verge on feeling quasi-seasonal.

I suppose I could crank up the air-con to freezing, but then I'd be increasing my carbon footprint, which is not a great idea, especially since we were shown a public awareness and do your bit video before watching The Penguins of Madagascar yesterday.

Did I say penguins? I wonder what they would do on a tropical island?

Oh, yes, now I remember, they sit on the beach tanning their faces.

On the subject of Penguins, I re-watched a perfect example of perfect emotionally-binding marketing, which brought tears to my eyes and made me feel slightly, if not rather Christmassy.

I wonder if I will get a penguin for Christmas?

BAH HUMBUG

Bah Humbug. It's December again - 12 days to Christmas

Bah Humbug, it's 13th December and I only have 12 days to sort everything out before everyone stuffs themselves, gets buried under a landfill of torn up and scrunched up wrapping paper that could have been recycled if only they hadn't ripped it off.

I realised that it was this day last year that I ventured into the cavernous maze of Vivo City shopping mall. You get the sense that it should be full of life and Spanish music. Which of course it is not. It is always full of people and booming echoes. Nothing like a lively shopping area in the south of Spain.

This year, by sheer co-incidence, I did not go back to Vivo, instead, I ventured along Orchard Road, - rather like Oxford Street on any day. I ventured out early to beat the crowds, get the whole rigmarole of shopping out of the way early, and thereby minimise my chance of having to queue, which I eloquently bah-humbugged about yesterday.

I targeted the Paragon shopping centre, for numerous reasons. Mostly because I had become rather weary with waiting on the phone for 37 minutes and then not getting an answer to my query to that I could purchase the item on line. It appears that shopping on line is really not a substitute for walking into a shop and having a face to face interaction with a real person. A prime example of why queues are not going anywhere, fast

The name Paragon, always strikes me as a strange name for a shopping centre. One normally associates the idea of paragon with someone of extreme virtue, merit or excellence. Personally, I do not find parting with obscene amounts of cash in a glitzy shopping centre to be either virtuous, merit-worthy nor excellent.

Not unexpectedly, I still had to queue at my final destination. But until that particular retail outlet lifted its shutters to blast an overly-zealous welcome to our store in my ear when I was trying to read a book - I was not going to be outdone by the waste-of-time-queue-monster - I decided to run some other errands in some of the shops that were open.

That is easier said than done.

Like last year, this place of shopping seemed to be filled with humans who were shoaling. Shoaling like fish, not Shaolin' like the Kung Fu monks. Everywhere I turned, semi-vacant individuals meandered around shops, not really with a purpose, almost as if they have been brainwashed to enter a shop, wander around and then purchase something of non-descript purpose, to wrap up and pass off as a well-thought out gift to someone they are not sure why they are buying a gift for in the first place. It might also have been that it was fairly early on a Saturday morning.

Nevertheless, when humans mill, shoal or even peregrinate, (there is a good word, meaning to travel or journey on foot, which is exactly what they are doing, gyrating around the shopping aisles and displays, on foot) they seem to morph into a state of oblivion of the world or anyone else around them. That was rather a lengthy and complex sentence but it captures the rigmarole of trying to avoid these quasi-shoppers. Unaware, they gravitate into my walking trajectory and block my way down aisles that make you feel like you entered the rubbish crusher in Star Wars. Where is Yoda when you need him?


All of this invariably leads to me muttering under my breath about awareness. I seem to remember the same thing happening when I went to buy milk on Tuesday. No wonder Neil Gaiman ended up on an adventure when he went out to buy a pint of milk. Fortunately the Milk, great book

Once again, as I sat awaiting my turn to be called from the digital voice linked to the linear queue system, last year's tongue twister came to mind: 

A Singapore Shopping Centre, Swimming with Shoaling Shoppers

Good job there were no sharks around.

BAH HUMBUG

Bah Humbug. It's December again - 13 days to Christmas

Bah Humbug, it's 12th December. And I've only got 13 days left!

Half the gifts I ordered on line have not turned up yet. What is the point of ordering on line if your "stuff" never arrives?

And then there is the "trying to order on line" thingy. That is where you go on line to purchase something because you don't want to elbow your way through the crowds. The "trying" comes in to this because, no matter how hard you try, you can't order. In my case, I need to talk to someone.

Easy.

Get off my butt and go to the shop.

Why do that? A shop where I would have to queue up? and as I mentioned, queueing is a sheer waste of time. 

(even seagulls seem to queue these days)

Which made me wonder why on earth we queue, and why on earth the British are known to be the best at it.

The queue is revered as a very British institution. Although, actually the word comes from the French word for tail, queue, which in turn derived from the Latin cauda. And so, contrary to popular belief, and as the BBC write, it was Thomas Carlyle a 19^th century historian who wrote about the French penchant for “standing in a queue”.

Another instance of the British, borrowing to create such a wonderful and rich language. (see the History of the English Language in 10 minutes):

So where did the myth about the stoic Brits and their passion for queues come from?

There are supposedly some references to queueing in the Bible, but I am not too sure about where that comes into play. What is clear however is that the British queue in an orderly manner for things like Wimbledon and mostly in banks, but waiting for a bus? No. 

Or is that because there are now so many people in Britain who have forgotten or never been instructed in this art?

Queueing had become a government-led institution in Britain during WW2 when everyone was expected to do their part, and that included waiting for your turn. Typically British, patience, decency, stiff upper lip and fair play! Except that fair play does not really come into it, more self interest, especially in the case of queue-jumping where I am sure, that many "queuers" (invented word) might like, quite controversially, to bop the jumper on the head. To throw a spanner in the works, there are the queue-jumpers who pay for the privilege, normally which turns out to be quite pointless, especially if you are in the queue for the January Sales, which probably won’t be much this year as everyone spent their money on Black Friday. However, if you are at a theme park, then there is a point to paying, although the danger is that you might get bopped on the head or thrown off one of those helter-skelter rides in the dark.

Dr Kate Bradley, a lecturer in social history and social policy at the University of Kent writes about the reality of queueing during WWII and of the arguments, civil disturbances of the time. She comments that “queueing was exhausting, frustrating and tense.”

Exactly my point!

Just the same today as it ever was. And if you try and queue for a bus or anywhere where there is no demarcation nor indication of how to queue, then the whole concept flies out of the window, or into a punching match – look at that stupid American custom of Black Friday, (that has nothing to do with darkness, witches and evil other than companies enticing us gullible consumers to part with our money). Bedlam – and there is a word that has a deep meaning – but that madness will have to wait for another day of griping.

There are theories and psychology papers about queueing. The theory of queues, which is all about maths and science and prediction and probability. And if you leave the queue you are in originally, you will never be happy and not get there any faster. Try it at a supermarket. Although on Wednesday I tried staying in the same queue and it didn’t work.

Meanwhile, Management Today reckons that the institution of the queue is dying out. We are moving to virtual queues, thanks to Rodger Dudding, a British engineer who lived in Stockholm and who devised a ticket-dispensing machine, the idea of linear queues from America and then Terry Green.

Terry Green, along with Martin Christie, an inventor, made use of digital sound recording to link a message to a number indicator board. Thus by telling the customer at the front of the linear queue which counter to proceed to, ‘cashier number five, please,’ the customer throughput increased by 15%. That means 15% less waiting time for everyone else in the queue, which of course depends upon how long the queue is and the types of transactions happening ahead of you.

All well and good, but if you are in a supermarket, then “cashier number five, please,’ does not work. And certainly not when you are Christmas shopping.

And then you get the economist’s view. Queueing is a failure of the system to match supply with demand. If you increase the price, the queue disappears, and so probably do your profits.

Nevertheless, they have cottoned on to my point, that time spent queueing is a loss of personal time and extremely inefficient.

Even making a phone call to a sales hot-line or ordering on line, you find yourself in a queue, waiting for someone to speak to you or waiting for your goods to be shipped out, because of an increase in demand and there are rather a lot of orders waiting in front of you.

And so, back to the reason why we queue. We queue for things we want, or think we want. Sometimes we queue simply because there is a queue (I see that a great deal where I live!), sometimes we queue because there is a limited supply of an item, such as concert tickets, items on sale, and sometimes queues form because the demand outstrips the supply. Maybe the answer to queues at Christmas might be to increase supply and the irritating queues would disappear.

The fall-back option is the telephone. 

Excellent idea.

Until I end up sitting waiting for someone to answer for 37 minutes and 37 seconds! And then the phone cuts off! 

Not such an excellent idea.

BAH HUMBUG

Bah Humbug. It's December again - 14 days until Christmas

Bah Humbug, it's 11th December. It's Thursday and now I am half way through another week and only 14 days to go.

I've just realised that I brought a box of Christmas decorations up from the basement and left them sitting behind the piano. Now that is clever, or rather absent minded of me. 

I now have the conundrum of whether to unpack them and decorate the tree, which after all will only be decorated for another couple of weeks, or just put them away. I don't even remember what is in that box, other than little glass trinkets. Little glass trinkets that the cat will probably play with. Maybe I'll just put the box away.

Which raises the question of why on earth do we cut down evergreen fir trees, and of a particular type, we tend to get Noble Firs here in Singapore while in the US they like the Scots Pine, which always makes me think of men in kilts moaning that they've been forgotten at Christmas.

I digress.

If you are not in to chopping down forests, even if they are grown for chopping down, then you will have invested in a recyclable Christmas tree - in other words, a fake one. One that you take down each year, tape up with tie-wraps and stick in a cupboard to gather dust for the next 11 months of the year. But it does save money and trees and necessitates a certain amount of exercise and exertion to put it together and stand it up. Mine weighs a ton.

I digressed again from the point, why do we decorate fir/pine trees at Christmas?

Johansen_Viggo_-_Radosne_Boże_Narodzenie.jpg

The ritual, for that is really what it is, of decorating the Christmas tree, is a family occasion, when everyone helps and gets into the Christmas spirit. Well that is how it used to be; now it is just me, as my boys feel too grown up for this.

I decided to look into this, and here is my potted - like the tree - summary of where it all came from. I've included some links at the end for anyone who really is interested ;)

Legend has it that St Boniface travelled from Devon in 7^th Century to the area of what is now Northern Germany to convert the pagan tribes to Christianity. He is said to have used the triangular shape of the fir tree to explain the Holy Trinity.

Whether that is true or not, many northern Europeans would hang pine trees upside down in and around their homes – (they do make things smell nice when it is stuffy at Christmas). Romans used to decorate their doors with wreaths and arrangements made from greenery to signify a celebration. It was also believed that they kept out evil spirits and witches.

Trees began to be decorated at Christmas fairs held in sixteenth century, to attract people to merchant’s stalls. The merchants hung gifts and food and all sorts on their trees. Rather like the shop windows of today and the scenes outside the shopping malls in Singapore, the trees became more and more elaborate as merchants became more competitive.

It was Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer who first decorated trees with candles to capture the scene of the stars in the sky at Christmas.

The Christmas tree eventually became popular in Great Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria. She used to have one in her room as a child each Christmas. She decorated her tree with candles and was sketched along side it with Prince Albert and their children.

The one downside with putting candles on trees is that you are mixing wood and flames, which equal fire. 

Some insurance companies in the US wanted the government to pass a law banning candles on trees. A prime example of Bah Humbug! In 1895 and American Ralph Morris invented the electric Christmas lights. Which sort of put stop to the insurance companies spoiling Christmas!

That covers the lights, but what about the other decorations and trinkets we put on the tree?

Many years ago, people believed that when a tree lost its leaves outside that their spirits would leave them and then the leaves would never grow again. So, people dressed up the trees in brightly coloured strips of cloth to make sure that the spirits stayed with the trees.

When people began to bring trees inside at Christmas, they started decorating them with sweets and fruit and toys and beads and even tinsel. And the rest is history.

Which shows that traditions come from somewhere, often intriguing and varied and that we should always try to capture the original essence of why we celebrate certain festivals.

That reminds me, I still never got down to the bottom of why we give gifts at Christmas.

That will have to be for another day.

BAH HUMBUG.

The History of Christmas Trees

Why do we decorate a Christmas Tree?

Chronological History of the Christmas Tree

History of Christmas Trees

Bah Humbug. It's December again - 15 days to Christmas

Bah Humbug, it's 10th December. 

If it's 10th December, that means there are only 15 more days to go, or I suppose 14 before the eve of the day itself.

I still have a pile of Christmas cards I have not sent out as I ran out of stamps and I hate the post office at Christmas. Actually, I hate the post office most of the time. Anything that involves a queue to me seems entirely pointless and a waste of good time.

So instead I went out to have coffee with a friend. She needed some milk, and some mince pies, so I popped into the supermarket to buy some. Simple enough task.

Simple was the word. I popped to a fabulous bakery named Simply Bread. However, their kitchens are still under renovation, so they don't have any bread, or cakes, or in fact anything that has to be baked. Perhaps they should temporarily rename themselves to Simply.

I had not choice but to try the other bakery, that is not so good, but they did have mince pies. Until the woman in front of me purchased every single one. OK not every one, but all the traditional mince pies. 'You could have blueberry mince pies,' suggested the apathetic serving staff.

'Blueberry mince pies?'

'Blueberry mince pies?'

Is this some other Americanism that has crept into an age old tradition? since when did mince pies have blueberries in them?

I declined and resorted to the supermarket. I still had to purchase milk.

Joy to the world, or rather Boney M greeted me. Why is it that at the same time every year, we are subjected to Wizard, Boney M, Band Aid, McCartney and Wham as we stroll the even narrower aisles than usual because they've decided to build precarious castles of food on offer, that is probably still 20% more expensive than on a normal day?

As if the assault to my ears was not enough, everyone kept walking in my way or standing in the aisle in such a manner that it would be impossible to pass unless of course you were a large elephant and then you probably wouldn't care.

And then, and I feel a hyperbole coming, I had to wait a million years at the cashier because someone wanted to pay with gift tokens and someone else wanted to purchase a gift token and wanted an envelope for it.

All I wanted was a litre of semi-skimmed milk and six mince pies!

So a fifteen minute journey took me nearly an hour.

I rest my case, all that queueing, turned out to be a waste of my time because someone else was not being efficient with theirs.


To add icing to the Christmas cake, they were digging up the road outside my friend's house when I arrived.


I reckon it was all to do with the alignment of the stars, and that rather large one that will be settling down in 15 days time.

Meanwhile,  the cup of coffee from the french press was extremely welcome.


BAH HUMBUG

Why can't everyone go home and let me shop in peace?

Incidentally queueing can be spelt without the e but with the extra e is best, after all, what fun having a word with 5 consecutive vowels!