This year, due to I still need to clear 8 more days of my 2010 annual leave, I cleared 3 days during Chinese New year. With additional 3 more days for the Chinese New Year Public holidays, and each week I have 2 days off, in total I was able to take about 13 days of holiday. Initially I was still considering if I should go home or not, but if I do not, I will stay in Macau for 13 days where there is nothing I can do, so rather than waste them, I decided to go home and spend the new year with my family.
I flew back on the 28th January to Singapore and the next day I took a bus back to my hometown. As time, my throat felt very itchy and scared it might lead to cough or sore throat where it will deprive me of my good food, I control my intake of cookies. But still, I managed to eat a lot of yummy food and some of my favourite food. On our reunion lunch we had about 8 dishes and among them we had a real huge steam fish and huge steam prawns. (Sorry, too busy eating, therefore did not manage to take any photo) It was truly yummy! This trip I had: fried carrot cake, kuay chap (a kind of white noodle shape of triangle and eat with salted vegetables, and stewed pigs innards – some people might not accustom to this delicacy but it was very delicious!), lontong (rice cube with vegetable curry), laksa johor (white noodle with fish sauce), thosai, nasi lemak, red bean and jagung ais kacang and of course my mum’s cooking.. more healthy.. and only can find in 1 place – my home!
Of course when New Year approaches, there are many preparation and cleaning that we need to do. This year we even bought some “Kuang Ming” lantern to put at night. When we lit up the lantern, we make a wish and let the lantern bring our wishes up to the sky. However, we really had a lot of fun putting the lantern as due to strong wind, we end up chasing after the lantern to “rescue” them in order to avoid them being burn to ashes so soon or worse burn down other people’s house! It was really fun, which involve everyone in the family, some hold the lantern, 1 person to block the wind and it come from different direction! 1 to monitor the fire when we lit the cube of wax at the base of the lantern. Most of our lantern will go upwards and zoom to the side therefore it did not go too high, only 1 or 2 able to make it higher.
This year, there are also many family that play fireworks.. It was really nice.. Those are quite similar to those being played during National days but only slightly smaller. Very nice to watch all those colors exploding in the sky, witht he loud noice, they really give a little festive mood to the neighbourhood!
This year is the year of rabbit and in one of the temple that I went, they even have some live rabbits being put on display and some of them even wore clothes. Really cute!This year CNY was quite good for me, as I managed to catch up with a few friends in my hometown – PH, SL, SP, CS and LF and some of my Singapore friends, who I don’t often contact – EL, my ex boss – SL and some of my ex-colleague – EP, AK too! I also managed to have dinner with my cousin JL with my aunt and I followed my parents to visit my other aunties and cousins. I find this CNY I am able to catch up with many friends and relatives that I do not often catch up with, which was good!
Another activities that is a norm during CNY and that is gambling. I am not saying those going to casino, I am saying those we play with relatives with small bet for the fun of it. We had our gambling sessions – blackjack and mahjong. Needless to say, I lost during my mahjong session but I won a little during the blackjack session. Overall, I still lost. haha.. but it great fun and it was just playing with family members and for the festive season. No matter how busy this festive makes us, its always fun and we always look forward for the next year CNY. Not forgeting able to collect ANG POWS!
