Keep the Angpaus Coming

Like what dad said, Chinese New Year is fantastically hot.

So hot. Global warming. Greenhouse effect. Whatever merde they come up with.

Celebrating Chinese New Year the 'kampung' way has its own unique flavour. I call it the 'kampung' experience.

You don't see city people like me go making a big fuss about Chinese New Year, worse come to worse I'll only hunt for angpaus.

'Kampung' people scrub, clean, kill, cook, eat, gamble, laugh, talk and play with explosives during Chinese New Year. And they scare me with their monstrous appetite.

All those poker cards, cans of shandy and beer, phones ringing with Chinese songs, foul words in various Chinese dialects.

We don't gamble. The adults will not allow it. I love my money too much to gamble. Poker makes you use your brain, you know? And someone brought his set of Saidina (the cheapo Malaysian version of Monopoly).

Don't you just love that experience?

Did I mention about the wondrous food? It seems to be the greatest activity in the house, the preparation of food. I know how to cook simple stuff. It's always fun trying out new recipes. But I don't get the rapture they felt whilst running around the kitchen flour-faced with oily hands.

Chinese people can never eat silently.

Actually, none of us Asians do. But I think we must be the noisiest bunch on the dinner table. Even I, a Chinese, get annoyed sometimes.

Oh and the explosives. Illegal and dangerous, but that's the whole point of playing, right?

My little cousins were so eager to play with fire. Thing with kids is that they don't learn unless they taste the pain. After they feel the pain, they'll abstain for a while and next year, they'll be playing more dangerous ones.

Mom went around setting off fireworks like a kid. Haiz.

Such a peculiar expression for a baby. This girl is very generous with her smiles and laughs. She laughs like a firecracker.

Speaking of little cousins, I'm blessed to have a cute bunch of them:



Adorable when they're prim and proper, scary when they're mischievous. Damien had several bruises here and there because Clement loves to hit him.

I'm absolved from all these violence because I'm tall and fierce.

I make kids cry. Well, only this one so far. The others are well-mannered enough to know when to stop, and their parents are fiercer and stricter than I am.

The spoiled brat sat down and cried her guts out because I shouted at all of them to stop jumping around the double-decker bed. It's not like I slapped her or something. The others didn't cry or put out sour faces.

Frankly, the kids don't like her. They told me. She never addresses her elders. Not once.

Celebrated dad's lunar birthday there. Very nice of my Aunt Agnes and her husband to get him a cake from Secret Recipe.

So cute. I suka. I love that smile on his face. I love his hair. I'm not talking about dad.

Cute cute cute cute cute cute cute cute.

I've become nerdier. So they say. Henry James' 'The Portrait of a Lady' was with me 3 hours a day. But it's such a heavy novel I have to reread every sentence.

Thomas Hardy was right about his comment on James' style of writing. His English is superb, his writing skill flawless, as he can write lines and lines of nothingness.

The holiday ended soon enough. Siah surprised me with glittery fingernails. PINK glitter.

Siah oh Siah what happened to you?