Chinese New Year

Lets see, what to share about the Chinese New Year this year...

It was pretty uneventful dispite the earlier misgivings... It was rather quiet though... Totally unlike the Chinese New Year I used to have when I was a child. Then again, I'm not exactly sure if I miss my childhood CNY celebration either...

You see, I come from quite a diverse, traditional & big family (at least in my opinion). So CNY is always... how should i put it... ??? chaotic? It is normal to have about 150 people in our house & the whole New Year was centered on food preparation (Chinese are great foodies... They eat everything under the sun with the exception of those with upright vertebrate - though some are disagreeing with me on that point as well!).

Anyway, so with 150 people in your house, the minute you're awake, it's breakfast preparation - and Chinese Breakfast on CNY is not bread, eggs & coffee / cereal mind you. We have rice, roasted & salted peanuts and the main dish - mix vegetable (I understand that those having mix vegetable for breakfast are most likely Cantonese - so if you find you're a Cantonese & not having this traditional practice; you'll most likely be called a banana - yellow outside, white inside). Being Chinese, of course everything we do / eat / make must somehow relate to something auspicious. So in the mix veg, we have a black colour, hair looking algae called "Fatt Choy" which directly translates to "Hair-Looking" Vegetable; but as it sounds like "Fatt Choy" (meaning becoming prosperous / rich) as in Gong Hei Fatt Choy; Cantonese tends to put lots of this algae into their food. In fact I understand Chinese especially Cantonese are so particular in having this black algae that the harvesting has caused miles of new desert area in China!

That is just breakfast... By the time everyone finished breakfast (which means several batches of people taking turns to eat at the dining table) & all dishes are washed; it is time for lunch preparation and you guessed it... after lunch it is dinner preparation (which is usually the highlight meal of the day).

Some might wonder, how do you feed 150 people in a house with just 1 x 10 pax dining table? Well, we have a spare foldable table (which by the way can only fit 5 pax at max), but the bulk of the "Children" (and that includes un-married adults) have their meals "buffet" style! The amusing part was not the buffet meal, but rather the "table" that was used to arrange all the dishes... I give you 3 guesses, what we used for the table...

1. ...........???................



2. ...........???................



3. ...........???................



The answer is a Ping Pong table in the middle of our hall! haha... bet it didn't come across your mind... Rather creative isn't it.

Anyway, back to the present. So, as you can imagine, having 150pax every year until recently and suddenly having less than 12pax now (my in-laws, my 2 brother in-law & their family, my hubby & myself); it becomes extremely quiet even with the TV blaring at the background the whole day.

The good thing about celebrating CNY in KL though is having KL all to yourself. NO JAM!!! yeah! Imagine driving from Cheras to Bukit Bintang / Sungai Wang via Jalan Loke Yew without the customary crawl & taking 10mins max! Heaven! :-)

The 2nd day of CNY was more eventful when I went to my maternal grandmother's place for the 2nd leg of the celebration. More uncles & aunties, cousins and of course my own parent & brothers... Some "harmless" card games & catching up with everybody & stuffing our face silly with the New Year cookies + mandarin oranges. Granny of course prepared her signature Asam Laksa, Auntie Lai Chin - her "Mean-Fun-Gou". Food here is delicious - more Malaysianized Chinese type of food - aka spicy... hehe...

Anyway, a few hundred angpows lesser & a few kg added, it's time to go back to work... Though I keep telling myself it is neccessary to go back as I had a list of things-to-do in my log book; can you blame someone for grudgingly going back to work? Am just happy I didn't have to work over the CNY like I used to sometimes.

Happy Chinese New Year! Gong Hey... Gong Hey...