Lunar New Year in Singapore.

Lunar New Year is an important festival for all the Chinese around the world. It marks the beginning of a year. The old and unused ones will be replaced. That is the time for us to do spring-cleaning. For business man, all debts will be cleared. For kids, they will be sets of new clothing.

On the eve, family would have reunion dinner. In the past, family members go to far away places to work and only will come back to their home town to meet up and rest for this festive season. In Singapore, we would usually have steamboat dinner to feast. In the past, simple food like rice and vegetables were eaten everyday but during the Lunar New Year, meat, fish and some other delicacy will be bought and served.

So now in Singapore, having abalone is a luxury and it symbolized that the family had did well and this is to reward the whole year’s hard work.

This year, Sam and I had a 7 days non-stop feasting and visiting of relatives.

Godparents, my dad’s brothers and aunties and cousin, my Godparent’s siblings, Ah Chong (at hospital), Dr Tan, my nanny, Noris, then we went to Malaysia to visit Samantha’s family, her uncle and cousins, her sister’s in law, dinner with Chenghow and wife, Angel and Leo, Shiyun and family came to visit us, then we attended a special wedding function. Coming back to Singapore, we met up with my poly band mates and went for my Godfather’s birthday dinner, Anthony Ang’s house for feast and on the 7^th day, we met up with my secondary school band friends, to my 3^rd uncle house which is my mum’s siblings then to my uncle Heng’s house for feast.

 It is all for one cause: to catch up even all of us are busy during the rest of the year.

So I see the positive side of this festival is that we are able to meet up and see the younger ones growing as compared to the previous year, seeing the elderly ones getting more grey hair.

We witnessed some friends/relatives do have bad habits. It was kind of them to initiate their house for the gathering but the host were more busy entertaining themselves. So I saw some guest left immediately after the meal. I guess the bonding has been broken and I know that something must be done.

Then, we observed everyone is paying attention to the new kids and babies. The reaction of these new and young family members has shown the past teaching of the parents. At the same time, most of my younger cousin that used to be naughty had grown up and is taking over the role of a host.

At this time, Samantha and I do not have kids and we surely do not know how is the life of having a kid. No comments.

It was tiring but rewarding. Able to see our love ones and their family.

It is all about being thankful…

The most symbolic thing that we did was at Samantha’s family. 15 of us knee down and served her mother a cup of tea, individually. At the same time, thanking her for the past effort and giving her our blessings.

Can you guess, where am I? this was taken during my great grandmother's 100th birthday.

Lunar new Year 'salad'.