Christmas report!

On Saturday the 24th, Jodi worked in the morning and I went Christmas shopping. I got a message from Chris inviting us to go karaoke-ing that night, so Jodi met me in front of the Häagen-Dazs at Raffle's City and we had mediocre sushi at the place just south of Raffles before metro-ing down to Xujiahui. We passed Dairy Queen on the way to 扬歌 (Younger) Karaoke, so we sat out in front of Oriental Plaza and shared a banana strawberry blizzard. When we got to the karaoke place it was nearly 11pm, and we found Asa, Yan Ling, Chris and Alain waiting for a room. We sat around eating candy and playing UNO for more than two hours until a room opened up. Then we made up for the long wait by singing until 6am. Well, at least Jodi and the rest made it to 6am: I fell asleep at about 3 or 4. Jodi says I'm an old man.

So we took a taxi home, and then slept for most of Christmas Day. In the evening, we got up and lit the candle, read the Christmas story, opened presents, and went out to dinner at a place advertising itself as "New Concept Hunanese Cuisine" (新概念湖南料理); Jodi got a kick out of that. On the walk back, we picked up a hot chocolate at Starbucks and a couple of DVDs. That night we watched Hong Yan—I'm now a fan of movies about 1980s China—and I was tickled to see Kaizer Kuo in the credits, for translating the interstitials, I think.