Growing up, Christmas held little significance for me apart from the stifling heat in which I would wait for my parents to come home from work, whence I would complain about our lack of Christmas spirits. I was not really the modern day Tiny Tim, but my dramatic whinges about our tinsel-less existence would have made Mr. Dickens very proud.

Lest you picture a bleak Christmas with a young Polly dressed in rags and constant cries of “please sir, can I have some more?”, I should write that though I spent Christmas mornings alone in a Christmas tree-less flat, we always sat down to a scrumptious Christmas dinner in the evening. My parents fused the best worlds of Oriental cuisine and fresh Aussie seafood: Peking ducks with plum sauce, prawns and lobsters, mud crabs with shallots and ginger, cold smoked turkey and potato salads, etc. But despite having my stomach filled to such a capacity that would have brought eternal joy to Oliver Twist, I was a spoilt bratty girl who still “asked for more”.

Every year I would ask for a Christmas tree, and each time I was met with the same answer that our flat was too cluttered for a tree. I did not get over the disappointment until I was at least nineteen.

My bitterness was made worse by parents who insisted on including tree ornaments for my presents every bloody year. What they saw as an act of kindness -- to replace any feeling of loss on account of no trees -- was merely adding salt to the wound.

A few days ago, I realised that Pixie’s dad did the opposite to her. He bought her a lovely plastic pine tree, but denied her tree ornaments. If only we had discovered the polar scrooge-ness of parents earlier; we could have had one perfect tree together.

This Christmas, things are a little different. I finally got a tree to put up all those ornaments. My parents decided to make my last few months in Sydney memorable by giving me my long-wished for tree. It’s a plastic replica which we will, according to Mum, “use over and over again when the grandkids come over”.

Mir recently wrote that parents change their die-hard habits at the arrival of grandchildren. It seems my parents even change theirs for grandchildren of the phantom variety.

Shopping for the tree was quite a drama. Dad did not really care what we got, but Mum insisted on absolutely the best.

“I will not have your kids say to me: wai-pou (maternal grandmother), our Christmas tree is crap,” she said when I recommended a thin plastic one costing only thirty dollars.

In the end we settled on a plastic cashmere pine.

“Smell that! It even smells like a real one,” Mum said once I set up my long-awaited tree.

“No. I’m sure that’s the plastic you’re smelling,” I said.

“Just take a whiff. It’s pine-smelling plastic.”

“I don’t think it’s good for you to be sniffing plastic.” But I did it anyway.


And on this night before Christmas: Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

My mobile phone sprang into its polyphonic splendour while I was driving along the M4 motorway last week. I didn’t want to risk a fine by answering it. My mother, in the passenger seat, dove straight into my bag and flip opened my phone. I screamed for her to just let the phone ring out.

“Harlow?” said mummy dearest without notice to my panicked cries. “Now Polly drive at the road. She call later.”

My eyes wandered off the road and stared at her in horror momentarily. There are still moments of my life when I’m immature and bratty enough to feel ashamed of my mother’s broken English.

“Was it Pixie?” I asked after she hung up.

“No. It was a man. A man named Gay,” Mum answered, eyeing me suspiciously. “Who’s Gay?”

“Gray. G-R-A-Y.”

It was my friend Gray from uni, calling to confirm Friday night’s dinner plans with the Bear and Funk-Sole-Brother - events which in retrospect deserve their own blog post.

My mother has the habit of putting her own twist on my friends’ names: Felicity becomes Solicity, Resan (a masculine Kurdish version of Richard) turns into Roseanne, and Ricky spins into Licky.

“Why did you have to answer the phone? You said it all wrong. You sounded horrible.” I said cruelly. I drove in silence for the rest of the way home. I was not at my most dutiful-daughter-self.

As I watched her make wontons later that afternoon, I sheepishly tried to redeem myself.

“I'm a tightarse, mum. I didn't want to pay for the phone call back.”

Maybe mother knows best: she put extra shrimp roes in my wonton soup that evening. It's unclear if they were shrimp roes of forgiveness. We're not a very expressive nor transparent family.

I spent the night in melancholy reflection. While I float around with dreams of being a writer, it dawned on me that my parents will not be able to read anything that I write.

On Friday night, Pixie and I went to worship the venerable Mr Pitt and Mr Clooney at the temple of Ocean's 12. We saw it at the local multiplex in our not-very-safe western Sydney suburb. With cautious instincts ingrained in us since our teens, we walked briskly to the carpark after the movie.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a large group of boys. This wasn't a rare sight in our good ol' suburb on a Friday night. They're probably going to their cars to drag race each other through the carpark, I thought. But as we approached my car, we sensed their close presence.

"Oof, Ali, az eef yer can smash Harout. He bash the shit out of yer first!"

"Yer being a facking smart cunt?" Ali retorted.

With ten metres to go, we sprinted to my Corolla. I fumbled for the car keys and the contents of my bag spilled all over the ground. When we eventually made it inside, I locked the car door in one swift motion. By then, the juvenile delinquents were already standing in front of the car. One of them was already devoid of a shirt and paraded his adolescent pectoral muscles around.

"Oh, shit. I hope he doesn't fucking moon us," I said to Pixie.

As I backed out of the car space, we suddenly realised that though they were juvenile, they were not exactly delinquents. They were in fact on Mr Westfield's payroll as trolley boys. I had parked next to the trolley return bay and the previously topless boy was merely in the process of putting on his neon yellow reflector shirt.

"We're such dorks." Pixie said as I navigated the car around the wrongfully accused trolley boys.

Well put, Pixie.

High School Rival and Chubby Solicitor have been taking dance lessons in preparation for their wedding. On Monday night, they invited their close friends to waltz with them so that we do not look like an embarrassing bunch of Britney Spears impersonators in January.

A look of pure hatred and horror came over my face when I foxtrotted my way into the suburban dance studio. While I remembered to be in comfortable clothes and shoes, no one told me that the other essential accessory was a partner.

The three ladies and three gentlemen quickly latched onto each other. The lonely girl who had earlier fancied herself becoming the hottest dance sensation since Hugh Jackman was paired off with the dance instructor’s camp English husband.

“I will lend you my husband, Emery,” said the dance instructor with an impossibly small bum.

“Hullo there, muffins,” greeted Emery, in a pink silk shirt and tight black pants.

I fought the urge to take the dance instructor aside and relay to her Liza Minnelli’s romantic history.

Emery sang to Michael Bublè as we glided across the floor. Under his impeccable guidance, I was becoming quite competent. But I couldn’t stop staring at my feet.

“You know, I can’t keep my eyes off my feet,” I said.

Emery suddenly stopped. He led me to the side of the room and proceeded to examine my feet.

“Muffins, they are very interesting looking feet,” he declared. “Now, keep your eyes locked on my bluish grey eyes and you won’t worry a thing about making a mistake.”

I swapped partners with the Bridesmaid halfway through Fly Me to the Moon. Chubby Solicitor’s friend from the law firm, Bubble-O-Bill, was a massive ball of nervousness. He also had a habit of forming saliva bubbles around his mouth when he spoke.

Bubble-O-Bill did not have Emery’s grace and elegance. My interesting feet lost their rhythm. When came the time to do the fancy twirling bit, I spun out of control and slid ten feet across the dance floor on my knees.

Sensing my distress, Emery came back to be my partner again. But I no longer possessed my earlier brilliance.

“Muffins, what’s wrong with you? You were Ginger Rogers before. Now you’re stomping around like it’s a hoe-down,” said Emery with alarm.

“It’s Bubble-O-Bill,” I whispered. “He’s made me bad.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Muffins. It happens to the best of us,” Emery assured me. “I danced with my uncle Frank one wedding. Came out of that with bloodied toes and deepest sympathy for my poor aunt Vera.”

My creative outbursts are always in overdrive during exams. I had a great many things to write about over the last two weeks, but such urges were quashed as I chained myself to my laptop in order to write my thesis and study mundane things like Stochastic Analysis. Now that everything is finished and done (forever!) I feel my brain shrivel up like a prune.

Last week, the Mallavian Whiz told me about his favourite poem. He sent it to me, possibly hoping I could derive some inspiration from it during the exams. No such luck. I was as lacking in inspiration to write my thesis as ever. Frankly, as far as the thesis was concerned, there was no better inspiration than mugs of coffee without any sleep for several nights.

I could not draw any inspiration from the MW’s favourite poem because it was in Chinese and written hundreds of years ago. My modern Chinese tongue is lacking in proficiency at the best of times (dare I remind you about the Olympic diver episode?), so the cryptic limericks of dynasties from yesteryears sent me into a spin.

I asked the wise Pixie for help to decode the poem. O wise Pixie, at least she can read the gossip columns in the Chinese papers without confusion.

Alas, Pixie had much more fun poking fun at my current supposedly ambiguous friendship than being of any help. She emailed back with the following interpretation:

Blue blue is thy robe,
Weary is my heart.
Obstacles on thy path,
When shall I dance to the music?

I decided to have a second opinion. What better people to ask than my own kind parents? So after dinner one night last week, we gathered around the dining room table for Ancient Chinese Poetry Appreciation 101.

“See that last word on the first line? It’s another word for the robes scholars used to wear,” Dad pointed out.

“I’m not too sure about that word in the last line,” Mum contributed. “I have never seen it in my life.”

Before any progress was made in Ancient Chinese Poetry Appreciation 101, my kind parents morphed into the overly concerned parents of only child; they questioned my sudden interest in own culture after years of perceived denial.

“Why is this young man writing you poems?” Mum asked, but obviously thinking, how long have you known this young man? Should we be worried about possible grandchildren?

“He didn’t write it. It’s a poem from the Tang dynasty.” Dad smugly said, but obviously thinking, bloody fool couldn’t come up with anything original.

“What sort of person is he?” Mum continued with her questions, but obviously wanting to know, is he good enough for my baby girl?

“How did you meet this boy?” Dad asked, but obviously implying, I hope you didn’t meet him at that club you went to last Saturday night.

Bugger. Why could it have been Browning, Plath, or Madonna? I would have been able to tear through the metaphors and alliterations with greater competence and without assistance coupled with interrogation.