Celebrating Christmas early

A couple of years ago, I attended a Christmas party on December 6, nineteen days before Christmas. At the time, that was the earliest Christmas party I ever attended.

This year, I broke that record by 3 days. My work friends and I decided to have our little Yuletide get-together on December 3. Not because we wanted to break any records of course. But well, Giselle and Paulo are getting married on Dec 11, so the week before that (which is this week) would be tight for them. Then while they go on their honeymoon, Joh and Raffa would have impossibly tight skeds as well due to their Dec 19 wedding too. And when they head off to their honeymoon after that, Pia will by flying off to Davao. So really, there isn't any time left for us to have our Christmas party.

So there we were- Pia, Raffa, Joh, Che, Tim, Pau, Gi, Peegee, and myself (along with a very late John Q who just showed up right as we were about to leave) - wining and dining in the lobby of the Manila Peninsula. It was supposed to be Partie Noire et Blanche, where we all dressed up in elegant black and/or white clothes, and for the most part it was. Except I was the only one in white and Peegee came in a B&W striped shirt and jeans. =) Paulo commented that having everyone wearing black made it kinda sad, so maybe the next time we have a black and white dress-up party, we assign colors to different people.

We also had our traditional white elephant exchange gift ceremony, but unlike in previous years, this one didn't drag on too long because (1) there were only 9 of us (John Q didn't make it to this part of the evening), and (2) seems either all the gifts were pretty good or people were more content with what they got. The havaianas I brought ended up with Pia, while I got a perpetual dog-calendar, which I felt would look good either on my desk at work or in what will soon be my new flat.

I guess we may have a part 2 though, but maybe without Pau and Gi (and probably Raffa and Joh). Mike, Suzanne and Nenen are all coming to Manila for Christmas so I am pretty sure there will be another party coming up. Wonder though if we'll have another white elephant exchange gift session. I don't have anymore havaianas to give away. =)

(P.S. stay tuned for a post on my recent trip to Brazil for more info on why I had spare havs =))