Peace on earth, good will to those who are coming home

 I was going to paste cranky complaints about the lousy state of the world, including weapons and logistics of war, and the return of the blimp, but hey, it's Christmas.

this means that literally millions of people will be traveling home for Christmas, by air or by roads (buses, jeepneys or private cars)

We are expecting Ruby's roommate here for Christmas. Like Ruby she was doing student teaching (in Korea) and has to be back at college the first week of January, but it was too far and too expensive for her to return to her home in Brazil, so Ruby invited her here.

On Chirstmas eve, usually folks go to the late evening "midnight mass" and come home to a huge meal, called Noche Buena.

I finally got around to putting up Christmas lights. The ones we put up last year are dead so we had to buy new ones: Not many, and they are LED types. 

I shouldn't say I did it: The maid was in charge of buying and putting them up, since the discount store next to our home was out of lights so she had to search to buy them from the Palenke.

The new lights have electronic music, which is nice but after about ten minutes they drive you nuts so I turn them off, except for the lights on our street window, where the switch is inside the window to protect it from rain (only the extension cord is outside, since the plug is in the packing room six feet away).

The traffic here around the palenke (a block down) is terrible, and our cook complained about all the young people in the plaza (next to our place) very early in the monring. They are the kids who attended Simbang Gabi, and instead of going home (schools's out) or to work will stay there are socialize: something that is welcome after a two years of restrictions.

The hysterical warnings are now that the flu is here and lots of cases around.

But flu, like Dengue, is something that is normal, so life goes on normally. It is not like Covid, which did scare people and killed not just the old and infirm (which is normal) but young people. Many of us knew young folks who died, or were very very ill with it.