It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like... New Year...

The last of my presents are in the post!  And as a thank-you for my copious business, the post office gave me, with great ceremony... a free pack of post-office-branded tissues.  I do not understand my adopted country at all.

Also, my local 7/11 has a cardboard Christmas tree outside - by which I mean that it's actually cut out of a brown cardboard box, and then edged with a green tinsel garland and green ornaments to make it appear more... frondy, I guess.  There are presents underneath that are hilariously wrapped almost exactly the way I wrapped the ones I sent - in Thai newsprint with sparkly ribbons.  Vindicated!  (This is even funnier because 7/11 has actually started stocking wrapping paper this week - sorry, recipients of newsprint-wrapped goodies! - but only single, individually cellophaned sheets for small presents.  I guess it wasn't financially worth it to crack open a bunch of them just to decorate the shop.)

New Year's displays have also started appearing, although they tend to be a lot more, well, rationally-sized than Christmas displays in the West.  Usually, we're talking fireworks, balloons, garlands, a few presents (mainly toys, although the 7/11 display includes boxes of Oreos with a "To:" and "From:" space), and the ubiquitous "monk kits".  (These are buckets full of practical items, like canned food, bottled water, and matches; there's a monk's robe coiled up at the bottom.  People bring them to temples on holidays as a kind of offering.  The idea is that they make the monks' lives easier by reducing the need to go out and get everyday stuff themselves.  The first time I saw them, I thought they were just really boring gift baskets.)

Tomorrow there's an office party for those of us still kicking around, and then the office shuts until January!  Which is kind of nice; I mean, I'll still be working every day from home, but I'm realising more and more that the times when I'm naturally productive =/= office hours.  I think that occurred to me at about 2.30 this morning, as I was wrapping up a section on biodiversity conservation.