::A Geek in Korea::

Christmas this year was very different that the usual affair. We set up the tree a few days ago, and Yoshi has yet to destroy it. That alone is beyond strange. We had our wedding anniversary last week, so we’ve had an excessive number of opportunities to spoil ourselves in the past few days. Instead, both of us were struggling to thinking of a single thing we actually needed for the holidays.

Up until a few days ago, I was thinking about buying an ultra-expensive personal media player. After weighing in on different options, visiting electronics stores, and shopping around online, I ended up getting…nothing. It was decided that if we ever end up getting a car, we could get a Navigation/GPS/Digital Television/Movie player combination device. They are very popular here, and there would be no reason to get two devices with roughly the same abilities. We’d get a car to let us travel around Korea with our dog more easily, and get navigation device to get from point A to point B without a map. We’ve put off that decision until sometime in the upcoming New Year.

I told my wife that we needed to do something for the holiday. Gift giving is more for children or couples here. It’s not typically what married adults do. Since we hadn’t gotten anything to put under the tree, we went shopping today on our day off. This alone was a huge gift from me. Shopping? On Christmas? Are you kidding me?

It wasn’t even all that crowded today at the department stores visited. It’s rather weird. The holiday "crush" must have been leading up to the holidays, because it was a fairly average day in the mall. Due to the mild weather we’ve been having, all the winter items were being sold at steep discounts.My wife picked up a skirt and coat at a 70% discount. Holiday savings galore!

I didn’t have anything in mind for a gift since my expensive toy got shot down, so I ordered a DS game from my local retail connection. They’ll have an English version of the latest Castlevania title I’ve been looking forward to within the week for me. They even offered to import a Nintendo Wii for me, but I declined because being in a "forced to import English games at twice the price" situation sucks. I’ll wait until someone else figures out the details of how to play different region games on the cheap. Region locks = bad for my potential business.

We ate a cheap meal, went grocery shopping, then came back to the apartment to walk Yoshi. After his walk, my parents called on Skype and we chatted for an hour or longer. They’ve got a webcam now too, so we have video calls from time to time. We got caught up on their last trip, and filled them in on what we had been doing for the holiday. Usually my parents spend a fortune to ship gifts to me, but this year we opted for a simple transfer of funds. It makes more sense, but knowing I’ll be getting my IRS statements in the mail instead of, say, a cool gift, isn’t really something you look forward to.

 All and all, it was just another typical laid back lazy holiday. I don’t miss the stress and pressure of finding the perfect gift for people, but I do miss tearing into a package in anticipation of something new and great.