CNY Celebrations

When people told you that happy moments usually passed by faster than it normally does, I have to agree. CNY just passed by few days back. Although we are still in the fifteen days of the CNY, the joyful and merry first 3 days has gone. Looking back, CNY were merrier when we were kids. When we were waiting to receive angpows rather than distributing them now. It was merrier when there were firecrackers and lion dance everywhere unlike now that firecrackers are banned and it is hard to spot a single lion dance on the street. Even if you do get one, the so-called lion dance is not lively and energetic at all, if you get what I mean. It was crazy hanging out with friends then, visiting them from house to house. In short, the New Year is getting more silent each year.

This year, we were quite occupied with plans and activities. It was all about gathering with family members.

CNY Eve
We had a meal every 2-3 hours, daddy commented he hardly has sufficient time to digest the food. We promised mum that we would head back for lunch and then we had to rush to daddy's kao mou house in Serdang for a second round of late lunch. We had a lavish lunch at mum's house. All the food were offerings from the earlier praying ceremony to our God and ancestors. We had the same dishes in kao mou's house as well. But with a little extra of the irresistible roast duck! Simply delicious...errr...I mean the roast duck. Gotta ask kao mou where she bought it. Hahaha...then when it was about 5pm, we had to get ready again for the must-have reunion dinner. This year we had the reunion dinner in a restaurant. No more big hassle of cooking the dinner like in previous years. People preferred to have it in restaurants now a days. But thinking back, isn't it more merrier to cook the dinner and then have it with our family members instead of everybody parting their ways later once the dinner in the restaurant is finished?

We had our first lou sang of the year. And yes, talking about lou sang. The frequency of eating them now has gone down as well. Then, we had some little mahjong playing session at my grandma's home of course. When Lunz had his early sleep that night, both daddy and I watched Titanic till midnight. This was crazy. We imitated both Rose and Jack's dialogues as the movie played along and giggled afterwards. Hahaha....

Well, I guess the thing with eve of CNY is just practically having non-stop meals. :)

First Day of CNY
We made the visit to my second uncle's house which we did every year without fail. We had our vegetarian meal there as well. Daddy is a holy vegetarian on the first day of CNY every year without fail and nothing can tempt him into breaking the rules. Not even with the mouth-watering homemade chocolate chip cookies, twice as good as Famous Amos! I lost the battle to the cookies. I can't be as strict as he was because he claimed the cookies were made from eggs. I don't have strict perceptions in being a vegetarian as long as I don't gulped down meat. Other than that, I don't care what are the raw materials used to make the cookies. This was because the cookies were too tempting to care too much!

We spend the whole afternoon there and then adjourned back to our house for a nap. Later, we headed over to grandma's house for dinner. We had to return early back home that night because we will be going back to Ipoh the following day. Very early on the following day.

Second Day of CNY
We started the journey back to Ipoh as early as 7am. This year we made a difference. I followed daddy back to his grandma's house in Ipoh. Although it's a bit weird because me and Lunz wasn't in the picture earlier and then suddenly we existed, but his side of family made us felt welcome. I saw that daddy's 5th uncle and grandma tried to accept us and bring us into the circle of the family. I felt comfortable, thinking it wasn't that bad after all considering this was the first time we met.

Later, we went to grandma's goodies confectionery shop in town in the afternoon. There will be a lion dance at the shop around 12.30 noon. Lunz had a fun time wandering in the shop with different loads of sweets, biscuits, chocolates and etc. Even as an adult, I was incredibly happy to be in such a shop. There were so many varieties of goodies that you just don't know which one to pick. Lunz had a tough time deciding what he wants. However, we managed to bought some stuff to bring back home. Lunz even enjoyed the lion dance as well. He was not afraid at all. In fact, he joined in the rhythm and swayed along. Twisting his body from side to side with both of his forefingers up in the air.

We had dinner at the Ipoh's Tai Thong Restaurant. Lunz was incredibly cute and well behaved most of the time. But I think he really had a great time because it was considered his "new year"! He can have all the goodies of sweets, chocolates, biscuits or whatever he wanted. And he had already eaten loads of them, my gosh! We slept around 12 am that night. But me and daddy hardly had a wink because the air-cond was too cold and the bed was not comfy at all.

Third Day of CNY
We headed back to KL after we had breakfast in one of the shops in the town. Grandma packed us with some stuffs to bring back home and told us to visit her more frequent in time to come. I think we should go back more often. Grandma was the one who raised daddy up when he was young. We should spend some time with her when she is still around.

Lunz slept in the car throughout the whole journey back home. Then, we did nothing much for the rest of the evening except to stay at home and rest. Daddy was incredibly tired having to be the driver of the day plus insufficient sleep the night before. I drove Lunz back to mum's house to grab his passport-sized photo and birth certificate because we intended to make his passport the following day. I thought of inviting mum and bro to go to the Thean Hou Temple but later only I found out they just came back from there. They went without me. Hmmmppphhh! But, in return they asked me to join their Genting trip tomorrow. However, I rejected because my plan was to make Lunz passport the next day.

Fourth Day of CNY
The queue was bloody long at the immigration by the time we arrived. I think the queue was about 200m long and up to 100 plus people in it. I gave up. I must say we were late as we took the wrong turning and when we reached the building only we realized that the immigration office has moved to another building. I told daddy that since our trip is in May, we can come back in March and make sure it is a working day so that there wouldn't be such a long queue. It was almost impossible to wait especially with Lunz around. We headed back and had our early breakfast. Lunz was having a bit of running nose. I gave him some medicine later and all of us dozed off for our nap.

Darn....I should have followed mum to Genting then....hehehe...

The afternoon nap was very good as all of us had a very deep sleep. Later for dinner, mum and bro joined in for steamboat. The steamboat was a very rare one because we dined in candlelight. Just when we were about to put the ingredients into the pot, the restaurant went pitch black. There was no electricity supply and we had to eat with the only light source coming from the candle. The restaurant's people wouldn't even gave us a bit of a discount for the disruption. I told the lady boss that I would never make another trip back to her restaurant!

Then, we went back to mum's house for some Chinese mahjong session. We had a great time up until 10.30pm when we had to start heading back home by then. We have to leave because I had to work the following day.

Fifth Day of CNY
And there I am, already started working. Actually I planned to take leave earlier for this whole stretch of the week but my stupid company suddenly implemented a stupid "earned leave" rule with immediate effect. All my leave was utilized for Lunz school opening and there wasn't any leave left for my CNY.

So, here I am, at work, writing my blog. I'm gonna spend the rest of my day here lepaking. Work only starts next week! :P