Monday, January 30, 2006

Chinese New Year - Chu Yi


My family started off in the afternoon because apparently, no one could get enough sleep! After breakfast and plenty of dilly-dallying, changing, hair-styling etc. we managed to get into the CNY mood and started exchanging greetings.


Sort of went crazy with the new camera that I got. This was taken by my sister and I helped the rest of my siblings take photos while they received ang baos from my parents!


A family photo that we took somewhat long to take. It was quite a random arrangement. Apparently, my mother was inspired by the Jay photo that I posted yesterday here and decided to bring out some props for us to hold in order to make the photo more interesting. Also, there was light from the windows at the back and I took a glance at the camera's manual to set the flash so that the photo would come out nice!


A photo of the guys of the house - my dad, my brothers and I. There's a lantern hanging overhead that immediately bursts out into a New Year song everytime you clap loudly twice in front of it. It does get annoying sometimes, because my dad enjoys hearing it at the weirdest times of the day, but at the same time, it does serve to up the festive mood in the house!


We went to my maternal grandparents' place and started exchanging greetings. Unlike my paternal side, where a handshake would suffice, we still take mandarin oranges when greeting. I like and appreciate all these small traditional things because they make the entire thing interesting. This is the aunt who shares the same birthday as me. I realised it when I was young, I thought it was a pretty cool thing because there're 364 other days to be born on! And thus we'd celebrate our birthday together every year.


This is me and my er jiu mu exchanging greetings. Sidetracking a bit, my family was wearing such red clothes that we attracted the attention everytime we walked past the coffeeshop on the way to my grandparents' house. Even when we walked back at 1230AM, when there was a match between Man U and Wolves(?) going on on TV, everyone'd turn around and look. Arhm, haven't seen a Chinese costume before loves? =P


My brothers, my dad, my uncle and me. In glorious red.


You know you're the center of attention and made it big time when there's more than one camera taking your photo at any one time.


I have to announce that... this is my new pair of shoes for the new year!

After that my family went to my paternal grandma's side for awhile before returning. Watched Narnia and I must admit that it wasn't really that nice. The trailer was overly impressive and it made it felt like it would've been a blockbuster like no other, when in fact, it wasn't too good as a movie. I think the book would be a very entertaining read though, so I might try to get my hands on it. Also, the actors were all pretty fantastic, so a big thumbs up to them for that. A bit off topic that, but later on, we went to my uncle's house, which happened to be 4 floors downstairs! Tinkered a bit on the piano when I was there.

There was also this eye-relaxation machine thingy where it'd flash circular, colourful lights and somehow your eyes just feel relaxed after looking into it. I tried it out and it was fantastic. It really really worked, even though my eyes were still contact-lens-bound and dry and oxygen-deprived. He bought back tonnes of KFC (which happened to be on non-delivery during this festive season), and it tasted good! I think my favourite fast food place has got to be KFC.

We also took individual family photos, followed by a huge everybody-in photo. It was using some very expensive, high-tech, film-mode-camera. With the detachable lens and flash, super-professional-camera kind.


The last group photo taken by my cousin of the five of us. I don't really know why but all of us has a gold necklace with our birth-year animal on it. Mine has a tiger.

After that we went played blackjack. 13 people in total. We were all kind of tired after the whole thing though, so it wasn't as crazy as expected, but it was still good.

I am so dreading Wednesday when I realise how much fun I can have when I'm on OFF.
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