The same time around this year again, yes, secret Santa presents time. Being a secret Santa, I overheard the talk of my this year’s client talking about her preference. What she said was “anything from Dusk is good…” Okay, which means I have to drive myself to Civic to find the perfect present for her.

So I took off at about 9:20am, by the time I got there, there were not many shops open yet. I straight away went to the upper floor to look for the Dusk shop, it was not there. What the hell? I remember last time when I was in Canberra Centre, I did see Dusk. Where is it now?

I went to ask the information desk man, who just drove a scooter which is to provide to the people with disability back to his desk. He jumped off the scooter and said “Oh, we did have Dusk before but it’s no longer there…”

Oh, that is just so good. I travelled 20 ks to here on Sunday morning expecting buying something back to finish my Santa’s business, but the shop is gone now. I immediately thought about the Woden Shopping Centre, but quickly dismissed the idea. No, I can’t see myself driving another 15 ks to Woden just to buy some candles in a particular shop. This is not what a Santa does, or I don’t really want to be a perfect Santa any more.

So, here is solution. There is another candle shop called Candleman in Canberra Centre, which is fairly similar to Dusk. I decided to go there and grab some stuff over there. I finally found a pair of red candles in glass holders surrounded by red coloured holly wreaths. Well, this will do. I paid for it and couldn’t be happier to get out of there…

Well, being a secret Santa is nice, but being forced to fulfil one people’s wishes can be very hard, though I thought it would be easy. Just look at the shopping mall, it’s full of Santas who have to buy things for other Santas. They all say that Christmas is the time to give and share, but I guess the only one who really gets the benefits are those business bodies. We are just being used….