Never Heard Of Mince Pies Or Wrapping Paper?

It’s some Sultan’s birthday today and that means I have a day ‘off’ work. There are couple of issues that  I need to be online for, so can't completely relax. However, I do need to get a secret Santa gift for someone at work, so I decide to head into town…only to find that all roads leading to Kuala Lumpur are blocked with traffic. Looks like everyone else had the same idea, so I decide (after trying to get into the city via Bangsar and failing) to head out of town to 1-Utama. I buy some festive treats – including mince pies from M&S for the office: I can’t believe no-one there has ever heard of them – a strange fact seeing as they are all far too enthusiastic about everything Christmas over here.

I asked for wrapping paper in M&S for my secret Santa gift, but the checkout girl didn’t know where they kept is – it was either round the corner towards ladies bras, or by the front door. She asked one of her colleagues but it all got too dramatic, as he didn’t even know what wrapping paper was. Sigh.

There was no paper by the bras or the front door, so I left with only my mince pies.

I got pissed off in this other shop that was charging 100MYR for a couple of jigsaws but didn’t have a properly working Visa machine: I get really annoyed about these sorts of things. The extremely unattractive shop assistant keyed in everything to the register, took my card and then just said, matter of factly, ‘oh we can’t take cards, we don’t have a working machine’

Well fuck off then, oh, and Merry Christmas.