Everywhere around KL you see articles of promotional pieces meant to entice its viewers to join in the merriment that is Christmas (but mostly to cash-in on the fact that people are just more willing to part with larger sums during occasions). Anywhere you walk into promises special Christmas promotions and Christmas menus, everything has hints of snowflakes and reindeer and Santa Clause and Christmas carols. Oh, the sheer commercialism of it all is almost too much for me to resist. And then the day before Christmas arrives, I wake up to a scratchy throat and an aching head. All the parties and all the dinners and bonding, all thrown out the window. Curses.

Dashing around the house, she was possibly at her most unbecoming. Her mind was a whirlwind of nasty thoughts, and anything that managed to escape her lips began and ended with curses. The number of calls she'd made to her mom to reconfirm facts was borderline harassment. Every area she'd touched, overturned in crazed desperation. The serenity of a beautiful morning was interrupted by the slamming of anything that closed. After swirling around the house for the longest half hour of her life, like a woman possessed, she'd found it. Tucked away deep in the place she'd searched twice.

Finally able to relax, she slumps into the sofa chair in her room and sighs; filled with relief but yet unable to shake her festering annoyance. With her dress in hand and a crease on her brow she recaps the past half hour of needless obsession as she wasn't really planning on going to the party anyway.