was santa good to you? he was incredibly good to me. highlights include:

• a banana splits calendar


• two dvds by atom egoyan(calendar and exotica)


• thunderbirds dvd(volume 11 and 12)


• two legendary pink dots cds(synesthesia and all the king's men)


• two hugo montenegro cds(lady in cement ost and come spy with me)


• luke vibert's further nuggets cd(another library music compilation)


• the melancholy death of oyster boy & other stories by tim burton

i haven't been able to really take in the cds or dvds yet. and the fact that there is construction going on near here doesn't help.

other than material goods, the best thing by far about christmas was that i called my family and got to talk to my parents, my sisters and my brother. i even got to talk to one of my nieces and one of my nephews. so that was great. i hadn't actually heard any of their voices in about a year. so that was really nice and made me just feel wonderful. after talking to my family i called a few of my friends(and now i'm thinking i should of tried to call more of my friends but oh well), but was only able to reach my friend cat. she asked me, are you really in taiwan, you aren't really just around the corner are you? it would be just like me to pull such a stunt too. but indeed i was on the otherside of the planet. apparently, this one company here has this really cheap deal for calling overseas. so these calls were a test to see if it is really true. i'll know once the next phone bill comes.

this was the first christmas where i had to work. it wasn't quite as bad as i feared it might of been. i think i was just in denial it was really christmas, as it doesn't ever really feel like christmas to me here. the weather and the mood just don't match my vision of christmas. but regardless of how much it doesn't feel like christmas, you still know it is christmas. i had three classes on christmas day. one was a class i was substituting for. the class is in the afternoon so i was wondering, who are these people that can take classes in the daytime? housewives? it turns out they are students, or people who don't have to work, or people with flexible work hours. sometimes being a substitute can be hell, but this class was great! i really enjoyed it and liked the students. after that i had a new private student who i already like alot and then one of my regular students. it's always nice when you like your students and they are somewhat interesting. nothing worse than a really boring uninteresting student.