The holiday season started with the Winter Solstice on Monday. It’s a traditional Chinese celebration when most people would make their best effort to go home for a warm family dinner. With the pandemic still serious, my family of 10 (in HK) did not celebrate together for the first time in the past 11 years since I returned to HK. I did make an effort to go home to have a cozy dinner with my parents nonetheless.
Christmas this year for me seemed even more quiet than usual. Originally thought about designing and making a Christmas tree in the studio and take a nice pic of it to send off as Christmas greetings. Realizing time was scarce, I ditched the idea in favor of catching up with Inktober 52 and using the cartoons as a backdrop for the e-card. It was a good synergistic decision. The thought and pressure of asking the girl-I-like for a date didn’t even quite cross my mind this year amidst the pandemic. This year I feel more of an urgency to help those who are suffering in our declining city. On top of donating to a NGO who ran a charity crowdfunding campaign for feeding the homeless during the holidays, I subscribed to an embarrassingly small monthly donation to a fund that helps the pro-democracy protesters who are being persecuted/prosecuted since summer 2019.
A couple of old friends in US made an effort to message and re-connect with me in the past week, one even mailed me a physical Christmas card! Feels particularly warm that someone thinks of me from afar, not to mention receiving a card during this social-distancing digital era!
Also reconnected with some old friends in Canada. The pandemic in my other home city, Toronto, is also quite serious and the whole Ontario province was forced into lockdown starting Boxing Day. Hope my friends and their families are doing ok over there. I really do miss my friends and the simpler life in Canada, a dream recorder would certainly help prove my claims. I look forward to the day when the pandemic would fade that I can safely fly back to meet and catch up with my family and friends in “our home and native land”.
