Chinese New Year 2009

This year's CNY's been very different to last year's. last year i was back in KL, my 5 weeks holiday... memories of the atmosphere, noise, people, food, gatherings, ang paus, gambling it's been circling around in my head since last week. the closer CNY got, the more i missed being in KL. i miss it but it's not like i hate being in Melbourne. it's a different sort of celebration. there were many CNY festivals around suburbs in Victoria; suburbs that were mostly Chinese/Vietnamese populated. to me, it wasn't great. it was people using that opportunity to advertise their brands.. eg banks putting up stalls in a CNY festival. what have banks got to do with the celebration? stupid. anyway, i went to 2 festivals, one at boxhill with nancy on saturday. here r some pics: 

the other one i went to was at springvale with joe & ip. that one was really shit. i don't know if it was because we got there late but it was bad. even the dragon dance that i was so looking fwd to was shit. so no picture from there to show. :p 

i had CNY reunion dinner at joe's place. dinner was delicious but i was mostly concentrating on watching the tennis cuz federrer looked like he was gonna lose! almost died of stress. every point he won i was so happy. ppl seem to think he shouldn't win cuz u wanna see someone else up there, but the way i see it, this open, only federrer will be able to put up a good fight against nadal. nadal's been amazing! ok this post isn't about tennis. so yes... dinner, it was a chinese dinner. different to what i normally have (no yu sang, not one my fav but it has become one of the 'must haves') but it was home cooked and yum yum hehe... 

To the main day... CHOR YAT! I woke up feeling pretty happy, like i always do when it's chor yat, showered, dressed up, made up and ran down the stairs screaming 'gong hei fatt choi' to nancy. i was thinking to myself i'm gonna have a sweeettt cup of coffee. mum always says first thing u eat on chor yat should be something sweet. to my surprise, i found nian kao! nancy fried some nian kao n it was yum yum! funny how certain traditions just stick when u've grown up with it. nancy fried some cuz her mum does that every year on the 1st day... n me, i do what i do every year. wear red! haha... after my sweet breakfast i went for lunch with LG people. CNY this year was perfectly timed (well for me) as it was australia day (public holiday) and a monday (LG closed for lunch). we went to a chinese restaurant and had some dim sum! 

Sian Hong with a cha siew pau

 

Posers

 

The girls & Ven (with a sugar coated peanut stick in her mouth)

Sisil, Ven, Kat, Me, May

The boys

Russell, Suki, Sian Hong, Paul

I wanted a picture with the CNY deco hehe 

Red Red

After lunch we went karaoke.. nothing much happened there except good singing. haha... after K, joe, ip, mark n myself went to chinatown for dinner and i was sooooo happy when i saw lion dance. well, we heard and walked towards it. and well.. i've been waiting for it. just so damn excited i tell u. but tried to control myself cuz not a kid anymore... and the best part was they had fire cracker! it used to be so popular in KL until it was banned. so yea, it brought back some childhood memories which was nice. anyway, here r the pics ;)

The lion dance capped off my day beautifully. for a moment during the day i felt like it just wasn't CNY... until the lion dance. =) 

p/s let's hope CNY is a better start to my year