People who knows me will have you know that I am not much of a shopper. I prefer to zoom in on what I am looking for, maybe pick a little bit of this and that here and there...nothing major. I, therefore, do not understand why some people can spend the entire day spending nor do I get 'retail therapy'. It spells financial woes at the end of the day.
Anyway, while I love the vibe of Christmas, the one thing that I hate the most about it is the consumerism. Did you see the crawl outside malls? Were you one of those who was caught in one of those bumper-to-bumper traffic jams around them? Good Lord!
I hate consumerism but I hate traffic jams even more, so, apart from zipping in and out of the mall as quickly as I could, I managed to avoid the jams quite effortlessly. However, on the other hand, I HAD TO get caught in the consumerism because one family member is a Christian. Oh come on, let's face it, when she hands pressies to your kids, don't tell me you can just kindly take it and say 'thank you' and not hand something back.
It takes all but one Christian, I say. :-) Because she starts handing out pressies to all the kids and cousins and everyone's got no other choice but give presents back.
It doesn't help that this person is well-off, of course because if she gives your kids some really expensive thing, you can't give her kids pencil boxes and coloring pencils!
You see where this is heading, don't you? A spiraling trend of consumerism.
Why I hate consumerism is because I am in the advertising, sales, marketing industry. I KNOW HOW TO BLOW THINGS OUT OF PROPORTION to make it look absolutely so cool that everyone wants to part with their money.
It's a whole lot of unnecessary shebang that ropes people in. You get into their minds and into their hearts. It's all about the money....and don't you just hate that? I mean, it's alright if we are celebrating Thanksgiving whereby we share moments together and give thanks for what we have in our lives but, to celebrate by spending a fortune on stuff? Well, only the retailers are happy.
No, wait.
Only the kids and retailers are happy. Sigh...the kids being happy and screeching at the top of their lungs, 'I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!!'
Sigh...guess, I'm caught in this either way, eh? :-))))
I was kind of a little sad when I read the news about this - there will be no live-in Indonesian maids in Malaysia anymore . There are pros and cons to having a live-in maid, as with everything else, but for us, we enjoyed more pros than cons. Back then, when my kids were little, we brought in a family of maids to help with...well, just about everything, and we were like two families merged into one. They ate what we ate, we sleep, they sleep, we shop, they shop, they joke, we laugh, we joke, they laugh...for me, the maid I hired was more like a sister and side-kick to me. For that few years, I was dependent on her to mind-read my schedule and when I need or don't need help. She picked things up quickly and we ended up having lots of moments whereby we were in sync. Today, two of them are on my Facebook and we were gleefully chatting over Facebook Messenger since they've just discovered the wonders of the Internet and Social Media. Since we were more like partners in crim...
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Odd thing is though, after a while, no more presents and they avoid me. Don't know why.. but I'm still happy :)