CNY Recap, 2009

So this year there's not been a family trip but we're fine with that. After all, we like spending Chinese New Year going around visiting friends and playing card games and stuffing ourself silly with oranges.

And as usual, the recap. And some explaining to do.

1) First up, the reunion steamboat dinner. Now for past recent years, since our return from Glasgow, our reunion dinner has somehow become a steamboat dinner. Mum would spend the week prior preparing stock and ordering food, from fishballs to chicken to the yee sang.

Now - a bit about the layout at home:

The dining table, is in the kitchen. The mahjong table, is in the dining room.

The mahjong table, with it's nice silk tablecloth, is not meant for food or drinks, unless the cup is on a coaster, and only finger food like chips and muruku which would not stain or drip is allowed. We may be overexaggerating here but essentially is that we don't use the mahjong table to eat dinner. Oh yes, we neglected to mention why - the mahjong table is some heavy wooden table mum bought from Barang Barang, with a top that doubles up as a lid to the mahjong surface underneath. Workmanship like this, mum does not want to see ruined (well who would).

So we eat on the dining table in the kitchen - a nice round marble top table that's easy to clean. The dining table's in the kitchen because it's easier for mum to clean up after dinner that way.

Now.

During our previous reunion steamboat dinners, we haven't gotten the mahjong table yet. We'd only the round dining table, located in the dining area, and a square foldable table to use as our dinner table. So our steamboat dinner would be held in the dining area, which is more spacious. And all the food and the induction cooker (which was our steamboat) is placed on the foldable table, so everyone could sit around the dining table to eat together.

This year, we had dinner in the kitchen (goodness knows how we were going to transfer tables here and there!) and mum set up the induction cooker on the dining table itself. That led to us sitting on (what we like to think of as) the picnic table. We too were initially confused as to how we all couldn't fit around the table this year.

When both sis and us found out we were sitting on that table tho', both of us immediately thought of the opportunity to eat in front of the telly in the hall instead. Only, since it's a reunion dinner, family should eat together. Our problem was easily solved by moving the picnic table to one end, thus making a sort of keyhole-shaped table to fit all of us.

2) Instead of going to watch a Chinese movie at the cinemas as we usually do, sis and us this time decided to give the nearby DVD shop a try. Mind you now, we're talking about a DVD shop normally manned by Chinese folks, and it's already Chinese New Year Eve. Most retails have already closed up by noon (1U never looked so empty at any other time), and yet the two of us still decided to give it a try.

Maybe it's something to do so we could walk off our steamboat.

Maybe it's blind hope.

But to our delight, the store was open! Seems like these people know business is best at this particular period. We even found out that they were open throughout Chinese New Year. Happily we browsed before hogging our purchases back.

3) We missed the Klangite Chinese New Year visitation. Because we overslept when 'Nic called. Because it happened on the second day of CNY. And because we went out with sis and forgot to return 'Nic's call.

We'd only returned his call on the third day, when 'Nic was back at work, to find out that we missed a wee round of visitations. No news about Webchitect's usual dinner gathering, but then again we didn't ask. Our bad there for not keeping in touch.

4) We missed going visiting with the gang. Only because we were back at work by Thursday when everyone else took the entire week off. But lad held a dinner gathering again (last we attended was 2007) and this time, entertainment took place in the form of Guitar Hero and Magic Mike - an instant karaoke microphone. Just plug into AV ports.

After lad's place it was off to Lemon's place for more drinks and card games. Interestingly we have not gambled this year - card games turned out to be Saboteur that Ms Long Leaping owned.

5) Just yesterday the gang celebrated both Puddy and our becoming 'uncle' and 'aunty' with an ice-cream birthday cake from Baskin Robbins. Since it was held at our place, it also doubled up as a visitation for the gang, hahaha.

From the gang entertaining the Wee Wog, to having cake with phototaking from new proud DSLR owners lad and Esteban, to gossip, to watching videos backwards on the Wii, the night passed by fairly fast!