It was Christmas Eve 1984, and, just like I did every year in those days, I was running around the shops at the last minute desperately trying to find gifts for my family that might loosely be described as “thoughtful”.  As I was about to head home, mission kind of accomplished, I realised I had [...]

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Ho Ho Ho, Greg Redden! I know you live in the North Pole, but where are you originally from? I was born on a small mixed farm in South Australia; 3rd of Mum and Dad’s 10 kids. In a rural Catholic community, Mum and Dad raised us to believe in Santa, but a priority on [...]

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If you plan on walking into a department store this week and dropping Rp 3.2 million on a six-foot tall fake Christmas tree, don’t read this story. But if Christmas tree haggling is something you pride yourself on, if you look at the whole thing more like Christmas tree hunting than shopping, by all means [...]

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Guys, I am back to my grumpy old self. In the last article, “Solution to the Global Crisis”, I tried to be serious and it was basically a disaster. So let’s get back to my basics, which means making you laugh with my grouchiness. Christmas is coming very soon. For many of you, it signifies [...]

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Criticising Jakarta’s shopping malls for their ostentatious Christmas displays is too easy. We can feel sickened by the crass commercialisation of religious holidays in a country where many people do not have enough to eat, or we can naively view the Christmas glitz as an effort to uphold Indonesia’s religious pluralism. Ultimately, it’s a mostly [...]

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