5 days till Xmas

It's just under 1 week to Xmas, and it's hard to feel the yuletide joy when you know that Santa won't be coming to deliver any presents. How do I know that he won't be coming?

Well it's not because he and his reindeers died in the big sand storm out in central Australia in 1988... I since found out that was just a lie told to me by my parents. Why did they tell me this? I don't know, but these are the very same parents that set up our backyard at Easter with a number of booby-traps consisting of carefully placed bricks held up by sticks, hovering over carrots - all with the unholy purpose of squashing the Easter Bunny to death... and if that failed, my uncle had a shotgun loaded and ready to go. But my childhood traumas are different matter...

Also, it's not because I've been a naughty boy this year. Sadly, try as I might, compared to my friends, I'm a bloody angel. I challenge anyone to prove otherwise...

It's because he doesn't know where I'll be for Xmas. I didn't give him the address that I won't be in Tokyo on Xmas day by the deadline for the finalisation of the mailing list (last week I believe). But even if I was in Tokyo, he wouldn't have a hope in hell of finding me - the Toyko street system being as convoluted as it is.

Santa'd have to hook up some new-fangled navigation system to his sleigh... and he'd have to be able to understand Japanese in order to under the directions give to him by the navigation system... and he'd have to make it past the guards of my dormitory... it's not looking likely.

And that was the big surprise. I won't be in Tokyo for Xmas. I'm already back in Australia, to visit my parents... I wasn't going to tell them, I was planning on surprising them. This is why I haven't posted anything in a while, because the only thing I've been doing is getting ready to come back to Australia on sunday. But there was no telling what plans they would've made for the weekend, so it was entirely possible that I'd arrive at the airport and I'd have to catch a taxi... and I'd get home, and there wouldn't be anyone there... they'd be off on some dirty weekend somewhere, and wouldn't return until the next day... and I'd be sitting there, all by myself and no way to get into the house... it was a bit of a gamble.

But I'm back now, and the sun in Australia doesn't quite reach Tasmania, so I'm sitting here, in "summer" in a pair of jeans and 2 jumpers freezing my arse off... it's only moderately warmer than Japan right now.