Chinese New Year 2008

Today is the last day of Chinese New Year. So here's a short post to round-up our activities this year.

Few days before CNY
We were back in Kuantan few days before Chinese New Year. Managed to take Yiu Yiu to the beach and feasted on keropok lekor and ate at several of hubby's favourite breakfast haunts.

CNY eve
BIL and his wife who operates a hair salon in Singapore arrived home. Yiu Yiu got a playmate in Pin Pin, her cousin who's five months younger. Nothing special today except stuffing ourselves silly with more keropok lekor, followed by the traditional reunion dinner with steamed chicken, roast pork, garlic prawns, mushroom with sea cucumber and the likes. By the way, all the dishes were prepared by MIL, who's a great cook. This DIL basically just hang around the kitchen waiting for the chef to hand out menial tasks like cleaning the vegetables, trimming the prawns' antennas and washing dishes.

1st day of CNY
We had the usual vegetarian fried meehoon for breakfast as MIL observes a vegetarian diet every 1st and 15th of the lunar month. Thereafter, we were off to the annual open house of hubby's classmate, whose dad is some big shot in Kuantan. His wife is my varsity coursemate, and hubby and I first met at their wedding more than five years back, where he was part of the groom's entourage while I was with the bride's entourage who tortured them. The annual open house is a grand affair, complete with lion dance.

2nd day of CNY
Every year without fail, MIL will cook two big pots of a special porridge with lots of dried oysters, scallops, mushrooms, fatt choy, century eggs and salted eggs on the 2nd day of CNY. Hubby would invite his classmates over to savour the porridge and home made cookies. However, MIL has rather bad arthritis this time round and we decided to just cater some nasi dagang for our guests this year. Of course over the years, the group grew larger with the addition of their significant other, and subsequently the whole brood so the humble abode is hardly enough to fit everyone nowadays. In the evening, we made another trip to the beach but this time, it was jam packed with people who probably took the opportunity of the long weekend to have a holiday in Kuantan.

At the beach with her cousin who's five months younger. Notice how petite she is compared to him.

Blowing bubbles

3rd day of CNY
After visiting some relatives in the morning, we set out for Ipoh and that pretty much took up the whole day.

Subsequent days
Spent two days in Ipoh with my side of the family before coming back to KL and started work on Wednesday, the 7th day of CNY. The first day of work was quite relaxing with the office CNY celebration but it was payback time thereafter.

Went for dinner with several couple friends on Valentine's Day (no pressie this year!) followed by an invitation for Tin Kung prayers at a friend's house. We left before the prayers started though, as Yiu Yiu was getting tired and we still had to work the next day.

15th day of CNY
Here I am recounting the 15 days of CNY in Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit Bangkok. I'll be here for a week for several consecutive meetings. Hopefully will find time to do some shopping – read about the Pratunam market, I've never heard of this place in my last few trips here so hope to check it out for some bargains.