On the official light up day, we bravely visited Chinatown. We did not get to see the light up ceremony actually happening (crowd and road blockages), but we managed to eat, shop, buy and embraced the festive market spirit!
On 2nd Feb, we celebrated our wedding anniversary with a staycation at Parkroyal hotel, at Pickering street. Nice deco!
This year, I came to know that Lynn had CNY classroom deco competition at school, so I helped her (class). She told me that her form teacher called their deco pathetic. I went to her school and class on a Saturday morning for a parents' briefing session, and I jokingly told her it's almost disgraceful, ha! Well, we not only made an angbao fan, an angbao lantern (picture below), but also a "Yinliu fan". But alas, I did not take a picture of it! Well, I'm going to get this post published first, and shall see if I can patch up with any picture from Lynn's phone hopefully.
We thought that with the "yin liu fan", there's a good chance that her class could win. But they didn't. I kept asking Lynn to go 刺探军情, which she did not, so I had no idea what the winning class did. My guess is that the scoring was mainly on the piece of collective work that they did in class, which was to use 墨 to write and draw on a big piece of 春联红纸.
Random picture of CNY floral stalls in front of TPY library.
And finally I got a picture of the Chan family reunion! We had not taken family photo for many year already. The milestone this year was that Joyce is already taller than my sister (can't tell from this picture though). I wonder if next year, Lynn will be taller than me??
And here's the yearly reunion tradition for the Yap family!!
The cute cousins and their beautiful mummies (hahahah!!!!)
Opps, a bit dark. I should have done some editing before posting, but too lazy now..
We took turns to take individual family photos. When it was our turn, WK's mum was standing on the stairs already. After a few shots together, I actually wanted a photo of just the 3 of us, but didn't get the chance to. When reviewing the photos, I like this a lot, so i did some editing :)
The final and actual CNY eve's dinner, with the Lim. Out of the many photos that I can post, I choose this, ha. This was when Lynn complained that everybody instructed her to do things, scrutinised and criticised very step that she made, rather than do it themselves or trusted that she knew what to do. Ha, I totally understood and empathised.
Again, a rare group photo of the yearly affair!!
Finally, it's 初一. I thought that this was the last year that Lynn would oblige me to wear a cheongsam. Sigh, I can't be more right. In fact, she only wore it for this day. Subsequently, when she went to her cousin's place for 元宵，she chose another dress and didn't want to wear this.
About food! Firstly, Wee San asked about the standard of this year's 算盘子 that she did. Actually, it's the best that I had tasted after so many years since Grandma can't do it anymore. Cooking needs talent, so no matter how many other folks in our family knew and cooked this dish in previous years, I think her's probably the best.
And this year, I "cooked" a lot at home, cos WK's mum went Malacca for a week. We had a big spread of steamboat for 3 pax for 初一dinner.
In the mornings, we cooked noodles in the steamboat. It was fun and heart warming. Lynn took pictures and sent them in her class chat group. She got some replies, and mumbled to herself "who doesn't eat leftovers?.." For no great reasons, I felt touched by the sensibility. And I quickly added on, that it is indeed Chinese tradition that we ate leftovers for several meals during CNY period. We either re-heat leftovers from the previous day's feast, or cook the same variety of steamboat ingredient that's overstocked, which steamed from past practice.
初二，we made a trip to Kulai. Other than visit WK's grandma, we were also very excited at the thought of playing with her cat, which we met for the first time the previous CNY. We brought cat treat for the visit!
And we were happy that there's a new cat too! This one's friendlier, so Lynn got to stroke her. And the other cat was so much healthier than we first met her, more chubby and no more infection in the blind eye.
Finally, we rounded up CNY with the Woodlands visits. This year, aunt mainly invited our families, and much lesser friends, so it was less crowded and more cosy.
At Qiu Yun's house, JJ taught us new card games, and Qiu yun whipped up a last minute steamboat dinner for us! Grateful that fate brought us together.
Finally finally, after CNY ended on Friday, Lynn and WK's mum went to May's house on the Sunday (初十七）for a replacement 元宵gathering. And WK and I entertained Joc and Ginny at home. We ate rojak, had chips, beer and whisky, and steamboat instant noodles, ha!
And, the final finally, I borrowed grandma's jade bracelet to wear for CNY. I liked it a lot, but it actually didn't fit my wrist. Still I hope that one day it can belong to me.
Looks like there's always "new" things to write about every CNY.
No comments:
Post a Comment