Tree Is A Company III: Christmas Lights FAIL

I thought that would be the end of it when I finally swore off spending more on the Christmas tree. Firstly, I have yet to stop visiting Christmas deco departments, mostly due to the fact that HRH is not around to smack me. However, I did not buy anything although my tree is still missing a topper which had me hunting in almost every major mall in the Klang Valley (other than the terribly secluded ones in Klang). The furthest I went would probably be the obscure Great Eastern Mall, located along Jalan Ampang, which is almost a good 45 minutes drive from where I stay, provided there is no bad traffic of course which is highly unlikely nowadays. They had some pretty ones which are unfortunately astronomically priced.

Secondly, I came out of my room one night into the living room to discover something was not quite right with my tree. It took me about 5 seconds to realise that the lower half of the tree was in darkness. Apparently the whole strand consisting of 100 lights had fried - which would mean I had to slowly extricate the mentioned section by removing all the ornaments. Fine, despite my annoyed disposition, I had to buy another strand of lights to replace the burnt out section (who the hell makes Christmas lights which fries the whole length?). To my annoyance, due to the rearranging, the tree now looks slightly unbalanced. To the lay person it would probably mean nothing, but the inner angsty artist in me screamed. Fine, nevermind, I thought, while I smothered the screaming angsty artist. Barely one hour later, the replaced section flickered and before my very eyes, the lower half of the tree was plunged into darkness again!

"Must... control... fist... of... death...."


It took all my strength to control the welling rabid madness within me and not rush towards my overpriced tree and rip it to pieces with my bare hands. Post mortem discovery - my multi-socket plug proved to be the culprit. The loose connection had somehow resulted in a surge. Result - another strand of lights needed, which means yet another painstaking removal and replacement session. Did I mention how much I hate Christmas?