A New Year

Just came back not too long ago from Flat 8, where ZW and I went to celebrate Chinese New Year's Eve, the day of the traditional family gathering. I made my awesome chicken wings, after marinating them for almost 24 hours, and I'm pleased to say they were wiped out by everyone. I grin inside as I think about it.

Flat 8 (esp Jean!) cooked up a veritable feast. They made siu yok (roast pork) and char siu (bbq pork), and there were traditional favourites like dried shiitake mushrooms. Made me think of him, where they usually have shiitake mushrooms with hair moss. Hair moss is a strange thing, because it looks literally like a pile of hair. When I was younger I think my uncle used to scare me by saying it was the hair of naughty girls. It tasty mainly because it's very good at absorbing and holding onto the thickened oyster sauce it's often cooked in. Mmmm.

There were 8 of us in attendance, mainly because Tiff was too tired and decided not to turn up. The table was nicely cramped full of food and people. For dessert, Hui Min and Jean made tang yuan (glutinous rice dumplings), which was really tasty and a nice surprise, and we ended up having a debate about WHY it was traditional to eat it. We ended up resorting to wiki. We really are half-assed Asian people.

After ZW and I came back, I started cleaning my room. I basically didn't clean it since coming back from Morocco, even though the mess was bugging me. Now for once in weeks, there is nothing on my floor that isn't actually supposed to be there - well except the two packets of Special Tea I have under my desk, because there's no space to leave it in the kitchen. I feel very pleased with myself, especially since I beat cleaning it up BEFORE midnight, because it's bad luck to clean the floors on the 1st day of Chinese New Year. (Not that I seriously care about such things, but it seems rather twee to adhere to them now) It's something about sweeping away the good luck that a new year brings.

So anyway, hopefully this means I'll get good luck for this new lunar year. Been feeling blah the past few days, and hopefully that rights itself after today, oho.