CNY: The Snake Year 2013

It’s Chap Goh Meh today, which means it’s the last day of the Chinese New Year already. Happy Chap Goh Meh, to all celebrating and good luck with the tossing of mandarin oranges? Haha. I personally don’t celebrate this day. So, it’s a pretty quiet usual day for me and so I managed to sit myself down to come up with a short post of what went down during my Chinese New Year.

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As with the Chinese New Year, the reunion dinner is one of the most important meal for the family. :) It’s sort of the grandest meal we would have, or one that would be prepared. This year, we opted to eat in, with the parents cooking up a storm and my aunt made a huge ass delicious Yee Sang. This year, no fancy designs for the Yee Sang but we had abalone slices, instead of salmon.

The hugest Yee Sang who can possibly get.

Our 6 course meal with close up pictures below. :D

‘Pak Cham Kai’

Braised Mushrooms with Brocolli

Fried ‘Nam Yee’ Pork

Fried ‘wantans’

Curry Butter Prawns

Leeks with ‘Siew Yuk’, in ‘Nam Yee’ sauce.

That was all the awesome good food I had for reunion dinner, homecooked by the parents. Then, we headed to the temple to pray after dinner, it’s an annual thing. Came home and there were fireworks played in the neighbourhood. So much, that it almost sounded like a warzone. The brother wanted to have a closer look at them, so we walked around until we saw this neighbour with huge boxes of fireworks (x5). Yes, five whole boxes. Since I had my camera with me, I tried to shoot them. Which was pretty easy to shoot with an S90 because there was a scene mode for Fireworks. Basically point and shoot, and gorgeous pictures! Ta-da. Haha.

On the first day of the new year, I did my nails with a CNY theme in mind (here is the post; CNY nails!) and I shot #6 for | project 52, taking inspiration from my favourite peach wired headband and my curly hair. Here are some fun shots from that mini shoot.

Met my cutest, favourite nephew, the handsome Darren on the second day. So adorable he deserves a blown up picture.

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This post pretty much sums up how the Chinese New Year was for me, being able to celebrate on the first three days only because I started working on the fourth day. I wish I have been able to see my college friends, it’s been some time since I last saw the girls. :/ I’m still trying to get used to this whole work life balance. Wish me luck on that, and till next time! Will try to keep updating the blog whenever I can.

CNY: The Dragon Year 2012!

Like all the previous Chinese New Year(s), this year was celebrated in a pretty much similar fashion compared to previous years. Yes, there were the abundance of good food for the reunion dinner, followed by the annual visit to the temples. But, compared to other years, it was also different. Nothing is ever similar, no matter how much we would like things to remained the same; they usually don’t. Unfortunately.

And, I got to meet one of the cutest boys alive this CNY. He is my lecturer’s kid, super cute and mischievous. Heh.

Hoppity Hop, here comes the Bunny year!

I know this beyond overdue because Chinese New Year has come and gone since like eons! And it took me that bloody long just to blog about it, but what the hell, I’ve been working late for the past few weeks and when I’m back, I’m really just so exhausted! It actually feels like my bed is sinking when I lie down on it. So anyway, this will be a picture filled post, so do bear with me as I went slightly over the top with my camwhoring pictures.

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 Yee sang! Bunny shaped, what a cute way to welcome the Bunny year! Homemade by cousin sissy. <3

 The Feast! The Feast! The Feast! and the FAT too.

God! Look at the amount of firecrackers! You know what it felt like when they lighted them? I felt like I was in a warzone.

An annual ritual of lighting up the joss sticks.

  Hmm, I like these floating lanterns, but they are very dangerous! They might fall down and start burning houses!

 Because I was directly under the fireworks, I actually took this picture without looking at the camera.

 Chap choy. My first vegetarian meal of the Bunny year.

Baby Brandon is oh-so-cute! He likes to bite my fingers though. :)

 Rain rain go away. :( It rained during Chinese New Year!

Finally ate at the decades (?) old Sek Yuen! Food is quite good, it serves unusual dishes like the two above. The top one is the Pat Poh Stuffed Duck and the bottom one is Cold Jelly Chicken.

Meet the dragon biscuits that doesn’t even look like a dragon. Taste just as awesome though!

Playing poker with peanut as chips! These guys are plain hilarious. :)

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s one for the album! xx.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CNY at Thean Hou Temple

I have little recollection of my last visit to the Thean Hou Temple which is near Robson Heights, a place which I’m obviously not familiar either. But Mom said she brought us (my sis and I) there when we were young, also around the CNY time. According to mum, if there’s any place you want to get into the CNY mood, the temple is the place to be. I’m not going to write much, so this will be a photo blog post.

 

Hmm,  if you are wondering what a kau cim is, it’s actually the Oracle we learned in History lesson in high school. Or you can read this Wikipedia entry about it. And they have Chinese words on the other page but yours truly is a banana who doesn’t read Mandarin. Have to ask my friends to help me.