-- Tis the season for Pentatonix, whom I generally catch up with via friends' likes on Facebook. This one is "Mary, did you know?", from a couple of years ago.

But their new one is a terrific version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

Cohen himself apparently said of this song: "The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say: 'Look, I don't understand a fucking thing at all -- Hallelujah!' That's the only moment that we live here fully as human beings."

That pretty much sums the world up, I think.

-- Then there have been trees and Santas:





-- And the students' Christmas dinner at the very glitzy TPC Kuala Lumpur:



(And let it be said, as it's the sentimental season, that these truly wonderful young people do make up for a lot of the nastier aspects of my job.)

-- And a deliciously creamy strawberry cheesecake from Common Grind. (Since becoming a Kiwi, I've always found strawberries Christmassy. The price used to rocket as the festive season approached. Ah, the memories of Christmases past...)