Year of the Ox

24th January, 2009 - It's Chinese New Year Eve tomorrow .... seems like just yesterday we celebrated the year of the Rat and now we are ushering in the Ox!

This morning, our family gathered at parents' place for the once a year affair of a reunion meal. It sure has been ages since we started having early reunion meals, well .... we have more girls (4) than boys (2) in the family and with the girls having to go to their hubbies' reunion dinners, I suppose this is the best arrangement ... after all, with our big big family, we are so used to having celebrations and well, I sure am glad that our parents actually made it a point to have all their children stay near them, which I believe is what made our family a very close knitted one ^_^

So, after prayers and offerings to our ancestors, we had a pot luck gathering this time around ... mom cooked my favourite ginger wine chicken and steaming hot pork rib soup with turnip, Connie's "Wang Choi Chao Sau" was yummy ! (I couldn't resist 'ta pau' some home :-), as usual my longan jelly and spaghetti pun nearly habis (sampai tak cukup kuah ... aisay ... next time shall cook more sauce ya :-)

After that, it's "lou sang" toss with all good wishes for a better year : health, wealth, happiness, joy, career, education, etc. It was so noisy and well, everybody was kinda shouting all sorts of good luck wishes while mixing the "yue sang" with their chopsticks held as high up as possible ... "lou lou lou ah !!!!'' .... he he ... that was fun ^_^

And last but not least, it's Angpow time !!! Of course, the kids were all excited when we started our Angpow giveaway session, with the kids lining up one by one to wish mom ... in Teochew! Ha! That was sure a tough call for my kids :-) sorry lah, have not been teaching them the dialect. Luckily the aunties and uncles helped out ^_^ Hmm ... looks like its time to expose them to the dialect, starting with me of course ... ha ha. Still could recall the looks on the faces of my Chinese relatives back in China when we visited them many years back ... they were so surprised I could actually speak the dialect so fluently, thanks to mom and dad of course .... ^_^

Here's a toast to all my family, friends, colleagues, business associates and clients !!!! May the year of Ox be a prosperous and happy one ^_^