Those who know me will know that I have a special, special, special love for the Christmas season and all things related, including Christmas trees.
Perhaps it stems from the one that we always have at home.
As early as end November, The Parents made it a ritual every year to lug out the tree from its box in the storeroom, take out the decorations, the lights, and then, to the music of Christmas carols playing on the hi-fi set, set up the tree in the living room right next to the main door.
It was always a wistful day when the season ended and we had to take the tree down.
These days we have a much smaller tabletop tree that comes with its own cosy decor and which we'd bought from the department store because we wanted a new tree and I thought it looked really wintry and cosy and warm.
But I have a ritual of my own year on year.
I build my own collection of pictures of Christmas trees that I snap from just about anywhere. It depends on where I happen to go, be it a mall, a store, a decorative store, a hotel lobby, or even a hospital.
The tree doesn't have to be huge or glamorous or shiny or filled with intricate ornaments. It can be heartfelt, homely, cosy and built with love. But my heart tends to lean towards the glittery, golden ones. Not because they symbolize luxury (as most might think) but because seeing them in pictures makes me want to reach out and touch their golden lights, and when I do, the glorious little light on a tree so big leaves me a warm, fuzzy feeing inside.
This year my life was simpler, and so I got to go on a round robin around the various five-star hotels in Orchard, in the Downtown Core and in the Bay Area.
There was the tree of real needles and real pine in the lobby at Bugis. There was the gigantic one of red and gold at a lobby that's full of sun-filled light. There was the one which the staff decided to place near the lifts instead of the lobby and which I had to spend a couple of minutes looking around whilst wondering if they had decided to forgo the tree this year. Then there was the one somewhere in Orchard which- because of its American heritage- does a majestically glorious tree year on year that takes centrestage in its lobby and which glimmered with interesting decor (golden pine cones anyone?) and lights red and gold.
I wish I could have gone to more lobbies, but hey, that's how it was, I'm just thankful I got the time and mood to go, and this is precisely what I'm in it for.