Melacca Merrymakin'

Right. Christmas is usually a family event for us every year, while for some others it's a church thing, which leaves some others with nothing to do (and meeet up for beer). Normally the sis will be back, we'll have a family dinner, and the sis and us will head out for movies or such for some sibling quality time.

This year Christmas celebrations started early with an invite to Melacca for a bit of dinner, sleepover, Secret Santa gift exchange, the traditional showing of Love Actually and showing off the Melaccan abode.

We had Mr Messy pick us up from home (thankfully after we'd managed to get that batch of presents wrapped up) to meet up with the rest of the gang, and proceeded to lunch.

Trust us to order our 6-inch in advance only to find out the rest decided to go down on three footlongs.

Ah well we couldn't be waiting for the committee to decide, it's been ages since we had a Subway sandwich. Mr Messy then proceeded to demonstrate that You Are What You Wear For Your T-shirt. Egads, the mess he made during lunch, it was as if his sandwich was incontinent. :S

The trip down was easily passed by with a game of Musical Ping Pong. No balls nor paddles were involved, but there were colours, animals and carols - everyone had to think of songs with the chosen theme in the lyrics or song title when it was their turn, and we all were so engrossed that we missed the Alor Gajah exit in the end.

Still, we finally made our way to the Dragon Doctor's place where finally we were made privy to his plans - we were all free help for his Christmas dinner! Among the roles delegated to us all included being a waiter, a nanny, a photographer, a cook and entertainers. Us, being the waiter/bartender must happily say that the Baileys were generally well-received by all, the silent killer that irish cream can be.

As everybody headed off to bed we slowly wound down by having a bit of a read in the hall, only to find that everyone was still prowling the house at night all the way till...5am thereabouts.

Next day presents were handed all around. Look at his tree, there's space enough to fit a bed under it. And it was chock-filled with presents! Secret Santas were revealed and we got Mad Gab from our Secret Santa, Sporty Shaun. We could recognize the game straightaway because lad and us were looking through York House just the other day through their stock of games.

Lunch was then followed by a sprint along Jonker Street. There's no other word for it, it was a sprint. How else can you call it when, when you walk into the store, hurriedly made your purchase of redwood souvenirs, only to find the group has moved on three stores down?

This, we all found, is something we will need to plan for when the swarm descends onto the shopping bazaars of Bangkok next year.

The journey back was uneventful, save for the bit where the Touch 'n Go card hadn't enough credit to pay for the toll (and surprisingly all along the way there wasn't a single place where we could top up the card!), and somehow everyone arrived at McD's Mutiara Damansara at the same time for late dinner (where we learned about replacing bits of movie titles with the word 'Dick', for example the the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's-, Harry Potter and the Chamber of-, you get the idea).

We'll need another trip to Jonker Street for a longer walk next time!