It is the tenth day of
Chinese New Year. Everything has gone back to the normal. During CNY, my family would have a break for six days. I missed CNY.
On CNY Eve, I helped my family to prepare things - fruits, foods, chicken, roasted duck, roasted, pork praying materials, etc - for prayer and pray in the morning. After that, my sister helped to slice the chicken, duck and pork to pray our deceased ancestor. It was her first time doing that, so I find it very funny; unlike the others apart from me, she looked quite unprofessional. After we've finished and completed everything, my sister and I went to Sunshine Farlim Hypermarket to buy something. I bumped into Zaza, and apparently she's working there.
At night, as everyone did it, we had
reunion dinner. The dishes we had were, of course, awesome and delicious especially the soup (salted vegetable with duck) and the prawns (cooked in thick soy sauce with chili and celery). The prawns were really BIG and those two dishes are cook during CNY only. After dinner, we rested for a while while my dad and uncle put up the last minutes CNY decorations and my sister and I painted our nails - I painted my nails red. At 12a.m we started to pray again and we counted down with the live show from HK on Astro (sounds stupid, isn't it?). After that, we -my parents, my sister and my uncle - dressed in our new clothes, new shoes to go out and pray at several temples. My grandma and aunt did not follow us because it was too late, for them. If you're thinking there must be not many or no people, then you're very wrong. Almost every single temple in Penang is crowded with people. We went to 5 temples and went back at 4a.m. Well, I don't find it tiring because we're doing this once a year only, so it's kind of exciting for staying up so late to go somewhere.
There wasn't much going on on the first day of CNY since we'd prayed during CNY Eve, technically. We woke up pretty late - 10-ish. My cousin and cousin in-law went to our house before we went out at 12-ish with their kids. At 2-ish, we - my parents, sister, uncle and grandma - went to our aunt's house in Jelutong - Mutiara Heights. I spent my time at there eating and watching TV while my sister and dad gambled with my another cousin, aunt and my cousin in-law. Something happened when we were having fun. Something that made us alerted and put us in a shock. Apparently, one of the lots on sixth floor was on fire. Of course we did not evacuate or ran down. I saw quite a lot of smokes coming from upper floor before we knew it was fire but I thought people were just praying so I didn't care about it. So, the incident broke everything was going on off and we went back at 6-ish.
We had our dinner at 7-ish and then we - my parents, sister and I only- went to
Hydro Majestic Hotel (somewhere between Batu Ferringhi and Tanjung Bungah) to visit my mom's side family. They are my relatives of course. I don't even recognize or haven't even seen some of them before. Quite boring sitting at there. They were doing all the most of the talking with my mom only. One of my aunt gave my sister and I some
red wine to drink, so we just toast with her and the rest. My dad said no to them because he had to drive and he's not a very good drinker :) Well, apparently I'm not a very good drinker either. I can feel my heart beats accelerate and my face, my body are hot after several glasses. To be honest, I've never thought I would drunk because I knew I won't get drunk so easily. My mom even noticed my face went red. But, my aunt keep pouring for me so I forced myself to finish it. At 10.30p.m., we wanted to go back already because my dad's friend was coming to our house so we went down but one of my aunt, came back from Australia, followed us and dragged us to the lounge in the hotel to have a few drinks, again. Since my dad's friend hasn't reached yet and this is the only time we get to meet with them, so we just went with the flow. We sat down and listened to the girls singing and then my mom's brother ordered a bucket of beer. He made us drink with him again, but I said no although I don't want to because I really can't take it anymore. I can feel my heart coming out from my chest at any time. After a while, I saw a dart board across the room, so I asked my sister and dad to play since I've never tried before. Well, I'm really sucked at it. It looked easy to play in the movie but when I play it myself, it was very difficult to hit the centre point. I even threw the dart outside the board and on the floor accidentally. Well, not only me exactly. My sister too :P But my dad was better than us both. It was really very embarrassing. Luckily there wasn't many people in the lounge bar :P After a few rounds, we went back to our table and my uncle forced my sister to drinks again. They ordered a few buckets and kept filling my sister's glass and asked her to toasted with my aunt, cousin and uncle, so she was forced to drink to not let them down. She was a good drinker, like my mom. Obviously, I inherited my dad's can't-really-drink genes. Like wth? LOL. One of the singing girl invited my mom's brother to go out and sing. It was a spur-of-the moment thing. So he just went out and sing a Chinese song. After a few minutes, we managed to escape from their remand :D It was really fun and exciting hanging out with them at the lounge. Their hotel room is quite lovely actually. We reached home at almost 12 a.m.
At 12-ish, my dad's friend finally came to our house to play mahjong. He played with my dad and my sister. I don't really know how to play mahjong. Sadly, none of my family wants to teach me :/ I just sat on the couch and watch Friends. I fell asleep after one episode. I woke up in the middle of the sleep because they were so noisy and I heard my uncle teased me. They were laughing at me and I went back to my sleep after that, I didn't care.
I didn't go anywhere on the
second day of CNY. We prayed in the morning and this prayer means the new year has 'unlocked'. After lunch, my dad and my uncle went to Turf Club with my cousin to watch the horse racing. My sister, a mahjong addict, played again with my cousin sister and aunt (I have many cousins and aunts). After they went back, we had our dinner and went to
Kek Lok Si at 9-ish. We go there every year and prefer going there at night because the scene is nicer with all the lightings and cooler without the blazing hot sunlight. We spend a good few hours at they and went back at 12-ish.
I stayed at home the whole day on the third day but I did went out at night. My sister asked me whether I wanna watch All's Well End's Well in Gurney or not but I made a very stupid and wrong decision because I said no. I said no because she said she's going with our cousin, so I thought we're going to watch with her together. They're quite close and talk about almost everything, so if I go, I'll be like an idiot following them. Regret, regret, regret! But, my sister still went to her boss's house so she wasn't with us until night. My uncle told us there's a CNY Open House at night at Campbell Street, so we went there. Apparently, it was on the fourth day, 29th of January instead of 28th of January. Sigh! Since we already went out, we went to shopping.
On the fourth day, I went out from afternoon until night. We went to pray at a temple in Tanjung Tokong and Snake Temple in Bayan Lepas (we did a lot of praying during CNY). You see, Tanjung Tokong and Bayan Lepas - like traveling from one end of Penang to the other end. I like it because I like long journey :D After praying in Snake's Temple, we went to Campbell Street for the CNY Open House. It was damn crowded and I literally had to duck around and push other people to go somewhere. At 6.45p.m. some children performed a mini dragon dance. It was really funny. Just so you know, I was standing in front of a stove where people baking loveletters. Can you imagine how hot do I felt? Not only that, my legs were screaming in pain, no thanks to my stupid peep-toe pump. Maybe it's still new, so it's quite tight. So, I went to meet my aunt and grandma to find a place to sit. Much to my dismay, there's no place. my sister and I went to the nearby bus station to sit for at least fourty five minutes. We bumped into aunt's friend with her family at there. What a coincidence. I even went to 7-11 to buy Galaxie to read while waiting for the lion dance to start at 8p.m. So when it started, we went across the street to get a better view. Well, quite awesome and amazing especially when they jumped from one pole to another. Read the Stars paper for more details. During the performance, our CM arrived and every cars had to give way to his car. His car was black and the window was covered.
When the perfomance finished, we went off to dinner at
New World Park. After finished our dinner, we went to some acrobatic performance at the stage there. When it finished, we finally went home. It was very, very tiring day but I slept at 1-ish though.
I stayed at home from morning until night on the fifth day except my sister, went out with friend and my dad went to Turf Club again. The most boring day...
As I mentioned earlier, my parents went back to work on the sixth day, so didn't go anyway obviously. On the seventh day, just went out for lunch and pray at Jade Emperor's Temple at Penang Hill. On the
eighth day night, I'm sure you'll know what I did with my family if you're a Chinese. We celebrated the Jade Emperor's birthday by offering many, many things. The apartment that we live in even had lion dance and burned fire crackers and fireworks. It was really fun. However, we're not Hokkien, so we didn't celebrated it conventionally.
I miss the days I had fun. And this is the longest post I've ever posted :)
