Christmas and Carmageddon

Christmas is arguably the biggest holiday celebration in the Philippines. We have become world-famous for our very long celebration of Christmas that starts in September and lasts until early to mid January.

Christmas in Greenbelt

It makes for a very festive time, especially from early December (or even late November) to early January when people schedule get-togethers with family and friends. And colleagues, of course. Speaking of, we had our company Christmas party in early December and it was provided a great venue to spend time with teammates without having to worry about work, at least for a night. We initially wanted to have our photo taken as a group at the designated photobooth but the line was extremely long so we decided to have our photos taken at the many bright and beautifully decorated Christmas trees at Solaire North, where our party was held. Naturally, I had to have my solo photo taken too!

Colorful Christmas at Solaire North

Our department Christmas party was held a week later at a venue that was about a 15-minute walk from our office. It was memorable for so many reasons. I somehow won best male costume. Our theme was the 1980s and I wore a Menudo-style outfit that I had worn before. My friend Vei, whom I have known now for a really long time since we worked together many years ago, won best female costume. We were then asked to dance on stage and the funny thing is, people might have thought that us dancing together on stage would embarrass us in the way that the new hire dance numbers during Christmas are like a painful rite of passage that rookies have to endure but for us it was the opposite; we were game and excited hahaha. We both sort of knew some popular Pinoy choreography from the 80s so we asked the DJ to play "Shake Body Dancer" and "Rico Mambo", both of which had dances that were popularized by Maricel Soriano. Finally, I won a pretty decent raffle prize: P1,000 worth of Starbucks GCs. Cool! Oh, and my prize for best costume was a P2,000 GC at Uniqlo. Awesome! I had been needing to get a new pair of shorts and some new socks and underwear so this prize was perfect for me.

My best costume prize: a Uniqlo GC

I mentioned that our department Christmas party was held quite near the office and that worked out well for me because it meant I could just leave my car at work and walk to our Christmas party venue, which I did. Because, while Christmas is mostly festive and celebratory, it also comes with a massive downside: horrendous traffic. Carmageddon is video game released in 1997 but it now also used as a term to describe proverbial doom brought about by too many cars on the road. It is such a smart play on words and an appropriate description of how gnarly and horrific things get on the city streets during the Yuletide season. Metro Manila already has one of the worst traffic situations in the world and the holiday season aggravates it significantly. Case in point: on my way to Estancia in early December to join some ex-colleagues for Christmas dinner, I got stuck in traffic along Pioneer and my ETA according to Waze kept on adjusting to a later time. It took me maybe 30 minutes to get through that relatively short stretch of road. Horrible!

This 12 minute jam turned into a 30 minute jam

Thankfully, a few of my other get-togethers recently were for brunch or lunch, meaning that traffic was not too bad yet. I met up with my friend Jenn at Crepe Glazik and with my friend Eliza at Watami in Shangri-La Mall. My Christmas board game night with FGTC was held in the evening but it was at my friend Myna's house which is not too far from where I live and the traffic to get to her place is thankfully not bad. And while we are on the topic of my board game night, I finally won a game for the first time in a while: Spots. It's a cool and cute game, especially if you love dogs, and it's easy to learn and quick and relatively easy to play. (There's also a lot of luck involved so my win was most likely due to luck than to strategy haha but I will take whatever win I can get!)

Playing and winning Spots

One other evening get-together I had was with my previous work team at Osteria Antica in Podium. We chose this place because none of us had eaten there yet and we had all been interested in it, even before it got its Michelin Selected status. What I didn't know is that Osteria Antica is actually the rebirth of Wildflour Italian. The place was full when we arrived and we didn't have a reservation but they did have a table outside so we took it. It was really dark outside without a lot of light sources so I couldn't take good photos of our food haha. Still, we really enjoyed our dinner here.

Dinner at Osteria Antica

My recent experience getting stuck along Pioneer for about half an hour or so has left me thinking whether I want to start declining invites for evening Christmas get-togethers in the future so I can avoid getting badly stuck in traffic. Still, I do find that at least for now, the pros outweigh the cons so I may still keep trying to brave Christmas Carmageddon to meet up with friends. (Ask me again a few years ago if that's still how I feel haha.)