Christmas is over, decorations down? Not yet! Niet, niet.

Russia

The Russian Orthodox church celebrates on Jan 7th, using a different calendar. 

Ukraine

This year a Ukrainian city near the border decided to celebrate instead on Dec 25th (in alignment with other parts of the world) instead of with Russia.

Spain and UK

 I remember as a child that we would go to my parents' one bedroom flat in Marbella, Spain. On Christmas day, instead of spending more for meals, we could have sardines on toast by the beach. 

Marbella had many ex-pat families from London, England, and Jews from North West London could be elsewhere for Christmas without the children noticing that they were not getting expensive presents but instead having a holiday swimming and sunbathing in the sun escaping the risk of snow in England.  If we extended our holiday to January 7th, on the evening of the 5ht or 6th, I forget which, we would read in the local free newspapers about the Magi on horseback parading through Estepona, and throwing sweets to the children in the crowd. One year we went along to see them. 

UK

In the UK many people keep up their decorations until the end of their break from work and school, at least until the new year when decorations change from red, green and white to silver, gold, white and black or blue. Increasingly with longer breaks, the decorations are staying up and the shops and attractions are attracting customers with ice rinks and events staying open. 

France

With energy expensive, economies are being made in the UK, France and Europe. In France some lights are turned off at a quarter to midnight (11.45 pm or 23.45). Others are turned off at 10 pm. So if you are taking a trip to see the lights, go early.

London

In London, England, new energy saving light bulbs are now the norm and it is hard to find bulbs for your old fittings or if one light bulb of a set of six needs replacing and you don't want one odd one.

Half Open Top Bus

You can take a tour of the lights in an open top bus. Actually, some of the buses are half open at the top. Depending on the weather, early boarders can get the seat open top with a better view and opportunity for unobstructed photos, or inside out of the chill and risk of rain.

Walking Tours Of The East End

If you are avoiding traffic and taking a walking tour of London, such as the East End of London, which I did one year, seeing Jack the Ripper sites and the Old Jewish East End. There you can sometimes see outside or inside a synagogue, learn about Disraeli, and pass another former synagogue which changed to another religion.  You can still buy bagels, at one of the two shops during the night for taxi drivers and night owl workers and tourists

Now the mosques and their Muslim congregations have taken over.. But the Asian sweets are an extra attraction.

Singapore

Over in Singapore, where parts of my family have lived, on and off, since the nineteen nineties, the department stores took down the Xmas decorations. But they kept up decorations for the anticipation of the next holiday, which was Chinese New Year, which falls variably, sometimes earlier than other years.

We are now looking forward to New Year. Celebrated in the UK, Gibraltar, and first over in Australia in New Zealand. Although the Chinese have a different New Year, increasingly around the world you can see magnificent displays of lights and fireworks in China, Singapore, Hong Kong and around the world, one after another.

Lastly, there's the ice hotels, in Sweden and other northern countries. Over in the USA, you can find one in the Americas, in Canada.

Useful Websites

Ukraine

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20221226-tearing-ourselves-away-ukrainians-break-with-russian-orthodox-christmas-tradition 

How to Reverse The Writing On A Selfie

I took a photo of myself wearing a New Year's Eve hat. It came out well. The only problem was, the writing was reversed. I knew that if you take yourself in a mirror the writing is reversed. I had not realized that you get the same problem with a selfie.

Reversal would also take place if you wear a t-shirt with a slogan. The same applies to a baseball hat with writing.

I wanted to get to this:

Selfie with writing rversed.

There are two ways around this.

1 Ask a bystander to photograph you. Ideally not a stranger who might run off with your phone. In my view a safer bet is a member of the restaurant staff.




2 Take another picture without the hat

3 Reverse the picture left to right.

Selfie reversed.

How do you do this? We did not know. But we reckoned there must be a symbol somewhere that fixed the problem. It had to be somewhere in our edit photos mode on the mobile phone. Failing that, we would have to fix it later on a photo editing programme in a laptop or computer programme.

Before risking ruining the picture we liked, we took another picture on which we could experiment.

Then we went into the editing photo mode on the mobile phone.

On a Samsung Galaxy this is the process:

1 Go into photo taking mode.

2 Use the reverse photo mode which on the Samsung Galaxy is a circle with two arrows around itand

3 Take a photo of yourself wearing a hat with writing.

4 $o see the photo you have just taken, you could go back into the main menu and press the photo view symbol. On the Samsung Galaxy it is called Gallery. The photo you have just taken is at the top of your screen under Today.

5 Once you are in photo taking mode, I find it quicker to click on the small picture of the photo you have taken in a circle to the left of the big white circle you press in the middle of the lower band on the screen.

6 Under the photo you see four symbols. One looks like a pencil for editing photos. click on this.

7 Up comes a small set of five symbols, below that a series of vertical lines which you slide from the middle to the left and right to adjust the horizontal.
Below that is the third set of symbols.

8 I usually use the two on the left of the bottom row.  the one on the far left enables you to adjust the middle line of vertical lines to adjust the horizon and get the picture level. Placing the pointer on the corners and pulling the corners of the picture diagonally enables you to cut out background such as
too much ceiling or floor, other people you don't want in the picture, or just to focus on the face and hat.

9 On the top row of symbols under the picture, the second symbol from the left looks like a vertical line with two arrows pinting away, like the symbol on a lift to open the doors. Click on this with your fingertip and your photo reverses right to left. (Click on it again and you will return to previous view.)

10 Remember to save the new version by clicking on the word save above the top of the screen.

11 If you have a different phone, go into Google and type in your phone brand name and model and the words how to reverse photo. Or ask the same question in help mode in your phone.

12 Using your experimental photo, click on all the symbols in photo edit mode to see what they do.

13 When you are with a large group of friends or family, ask a technical person, or a keen phtographer, or somebody who has the same phone, for their advice on editing photos.

14 If they do not know this trick, show them and ask what tricks they can teach you.

You may wish to avoid standing in front of any sign which will be reversed when you take a selfie photo.

However, I like to take a photo of a sign to tell me later where I was in order to help label the photos later.

Happy photo taking.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please bookmark your favourite posts and share links with your family, friends and colleagues.

Remember to bargain in Asia - this is what to do

Remember to bargain in Singapore.

So long as you are polite, you won't cause offense and you might save yourself some money. We used to have a saying in England, look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.

Singapore flag.

Lovely Large Lim's
In Singapore, I went to Lim's store, upstairs in Holland Village. The entrance to the upstairs shops is an escalator indoors and set back in a small lobby beside the entrance to the supermarket.

I used to browse and shop a lot in Lim's. This year I saw a rack of dresses by the shop open front with the tempting sign above the dresses for $12.

I asked the store owner if she had anything cheaper, or could reduce the price. She said, "already low price".

I looked all around at her other designs. The least expensive were those caftans beside the doorway. Large armholes, so sure to fit me. I liked several of the colours.

But I really wanted to pay only ten dollars. I decided first to check out the store across the way.

Over at Kim's I saw a caftan with an elephant pattern.  Same price. Twelve dollars. She showed me several other dresses, beyond my budget.

I was short of time, meeting friends shortly, and had already found an item I wanted near the price I wanted to pay.

But I had in mind spending ten dollars, not twelve. So I asked the seller, "What is your best price, how about ten dollars?"

She thought, then said, "eleven".

I sighed, "Ten."

She shook her head. "Eleven."

I thought. Then accepted. At least I had saved a dollar.

I asked, "Cash or credit card?' I knew her answer was going to be cash.

Later I told my Singaporean friends how I had offered ten but ended up paying eleven.. My friend Chia said, "You should have offered eight! Then she would have offered ten."

Useful Addresses & Websites
New Kim Dressmaker
Alice Ong
211 Holland Avenue #02-29
Holland Road Shopping Centre,
Singapore 278967
Tel: (+65) 6467 2056
Hp: (+65) 9834 3220
singaporeair.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.