Thursday, March 01, 2007

CNY Recap, 2004-2005

*Wii've got to do this in instalments, to put the whole thing as one single entry will be too big for our liking.*

Gotta recap how Chinese New Year has been for us for the pass few years. See, even last year's CNY celebrations weren't blogged (and here Wii were stating that Wii would blog about things rather then let them fade...)

Don't remember much about CNY 2004 except that we may have visited Uncle JS's house. We did visit SooJ's house, us bunch of UH housemen. And Wii *thinks* Klangites did a visit up to our place. *Fuzzy memory* Oh yes, the family and uncles decided to do CNY Eve dinner at Chuai Heng (Wii thinks it's called) at 1U. First time Wii makan out for family dinner.

CNY 2005 Wii remembers a *bit* more, Wii had our Nok7710 then for a bit o' photo-taking. But a couple of things Wii do remember come near CNY that were work-related...

1) Some old aunty came to the store to have her blood glucose checked. It was an exceptionally busy morning/afternoon, and Wii were either the only pharmacist or with a colleague...whatever the case both of us had our hands full with the queue of people wanting meds and such. So when this aunty came by Wii asked her to take a seat, Wii might take some time before Wii could actually sit down and do a blood glucose test for her (whatmore in apologetic, low-vocabulary Cantonese). Wii thinks she waited near 15 minutes before Wii could attend to her. Anyways, after seeing to her, she gave us an angpow. Which lead to:

"No, no, cannot!"
"Yes, yes, must take!"
"Cannot la Aunty, Wii cannot receive gifts leh, nevermind la Aunty..."
"No, you take!"
"Like that Wii use your angpow pay for blood test ar Aunty-"
"No! Blood test I will pay also, this one you keep!"
"Okay..."

Ended up using the angpow to buy Mamee for the staff.

2) Our contract changed from a full-time staff to a part-time staff after some discussions with HR. So somehow for the CNY month, instead of banking in our pay straight they issued a cheque (Come to think of it, maybe all these time our pay was issued by cheque...). Anyways, while everyone else have received the CNY pay, allowing them to do the necessary shopping in preparation for the festive season. Us, on the other hand, have been looking at a dwindling account. A few calls led us to find out that they've sent in a cheque instead, its probably still being processed, it's gone to some other bank...Wii chased high and low for it while steadily getting more and more frantic (right, Wii can actually here in the background of our brain a voice saying, "That's because you don't have a savings!").

Since Wii'd joined this line of work, Wii have been very easygoing with working shifts, working weekends, missing social meetups, cranky customers, nonstop queues...but don't play with us when it comes to money, especially, our money. That was the first time in that line of work that Wii were angry with anyone (also, probably, the only time). So Wii were stuck, unable to shop, surrounded in 1 Utama by loads of stores...sob sob.

In the end our pay came in on CNY Eve, when all boutiques were on half day. Thankfully pay came in before lunch time, when Wii took the opportunity to rush off to Dockers to get ourselves a new shirt and pants. That was essentially it. Half-hour, one store, walk in walk out. Wii did feel two ways about it: after all, goes to show how men can shop quickly, on the other hand Wii missed out on the whole shopping experience of comparing merchandise, browsing etc. *sigh* There's always next time.

3) CNY dinner was steamboat at home, the family and our uncles.

4) Visitations were rather vague. Wii thinks Wii had angpows collected on behalf of us...Wii had the Dreamcast initially set up, Wii thinks it was playing 'Who Wants To Beat Up A Millionaire?'. Wii set up the DC because Wii had four controllers and the Klangites were coming up for a visit (after they visited everyone else in Klang without us). On the way up, 'Ward got us to head to 1U first to buy the boardgame Risk for him, where we ended up playing in our place first.

5) Annual Klang CNY at Vincent's still went on, asides from us trying to take pics at night with our Nok7710, Randall also took pics. Wii have proof.

Also, experimental drinks instead of the regular beer or shandy!

6) Somewhere during our couple of days off, locum pharmacists took care of dispensing. However Wii had a call from the locum asking if Wii could come in and cover for a few hours as she wanted to send a family member off. Wii, in addition to being off, was sick (interestingly Wii were only sick when Wii were on holidays then). No way. End of story.

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