It's a holiday

It all started with a lunch in the house of a very religious family. At the beginning, everybody gave thanks. The idea is if you don't know whom to thank, thank god. And if you do know whom to thank, also thank god for letting you know them. At a time, the atmosphere became heavy. A lady really couldn't hold her tears when it was her turn to give thanks.  And later the grandfather of the family gave a serious short speech thanking god, describing god and loving god. People there really meant it. That's good, and that's pure.

My Thanksgiving dinner was in my advisor's apartment, with him, his parent who drove from Montreal to visit him and another Indian grad student who just came this week. Still a lot of food; although not as much as today's lunch, still I was crammed. Their coffee was good. It was not disturbing but very effective that kept me wide awake until driving to midnight madness.

Midnight madness, followed by mad Friday, was a hell of experience. If I were not there, I would never believe a line longer than 2 miles of vehicles waiting to enter that mall. It was a double- even quadruple-lane line on the expressway. I thought the situations on other routes entering there must be as bad as there, but later I was proved wrong. Only those who are crazy and simple would go for that Midnight Madness seriously, and since they are simple, they always prefer to stay on the major roads rather than to find a footpath.

It was like the whole new England came to Wrentham, the outlet mall. I wondered whether they went shopping at other times of a year. But the order there was not bad. Maybe it was also because they were simple.

People warned me about how awful the midnight madness would be. And that was the major reason I went for it. I didn't really want to get any big deals. I was just there to see how crazy people could become. And I did see people with various styles.

I got home around 6am after another fruitless visit to Bestbuy. Advertisements for Christmas were already there on my doorstep.