chinese new year

i'm sure many people's post headers are all "chinese new year", or "Happy chinese new year" or "gong xi fa cai!" or.. "happy cheena new year!" haha okay i'll stop. but i'd just like to tell you about my chinese new year. i don't care if no one reads through the whole thing, because i've just got to get it out.

I'VE GOT THE DARNDEST, MOST AWESOME FAMILY!

okay, now that's over, i can go through with the details, for those people like my sister who missed out. :)

I didn't expect much from chinese new year this year, but i sure got alot out of it. somehow or rather, my family did seem bigger than usual, even though few people were missing from all the action, eg sister, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin's kid, cousin's kid, cousin's wife, cousin's wife, auntie, auntie's husband, cousin, cousin's husband, cousin's 2 kids, cousin, cousin's husband, cousin's 2 kids, cousin, cousin's wife, cousin's 2 kids. auntie, uncle, cousin, cousin, cousin.. and that's about all who were missing. everyone accounted for. though they were missing, some new comers made up for them.

what am i doing drinking hot tea now i have no idea. i'm in australia! the land of the .. land of the free? nah, more like eggplant chips.

yah yah okay, so i collected lots of ang paos. yeah that aside. if i don't remember wrongly, i'm pretty sure that i made up my mind to spend chinese new year with my parents as often as possible. And i did! i didn't sleep in my cousin's house at all! i almost but i wanted to bathe. chinese new year was great because i think it was during that time at which i was my cleanest! haha i bathe in the mornings before i left the house, in the afternoons when we came back for a quick rest, and at night when we finally get back. chinese new year was great because i got to watch fireworks with my dad, for 15 mins, just the two of us, standing there. chinese new year was great because i got to watch fireworks for a whole 45 mins. driving through sitiawan just gazing up into the sky, left right front back, fireworks were doing the works in the sky that night! it was awesome.. haha also partly because fireworks were banned in sitiawan. but at the stroke of midnight, some came in a bit early, others late, something wrong with their clocks, big loud bangs of the firecrackers, all the way up, culminating till it reached the top then to finish off with one loud bang, and a spray of bright sparks, and red paper falling onto the ground, white smoke filling the air till it seems like the underground river in phantom of the opera.

so you understand why i have to bathe before i go to sleep everynight. all the dirt on my face, and body. my bed sheets would have black polka dots instead of white!

anyway, what else was new this year. oh our family got too big to have everyone sitting at 2 round tables. not even two. 4, we had to take turns to eat. and each turn included two tables. so that kinda sucked cause we wanted to have everyone together gether... so my uncle had already gotten a canopy to be put up just outside the house, with fans somemore k. no play play. and then we borrowed a about 5 or 6 tables, those plastic foldable ones and put them outside. and 2 bg canteen long ones from the church as well. haha it was great fun. the food was put on the long ones, and everyone queued up for food. haha i didn't queue lah. just cut the queue with my cousins. the perks of family :) haha okay

so we sat and talked and ate, and sat and talked and ate. and ate... and.. ate.

and chinese new year, never chinese new year unless someone loses money. so one round of poker they go, 2 rounds, 3 rounds, 4 rounds, till the wives complain and it's time for the kids to go hom and sleep. other than poker, we played black jack. i suck at this game. i know i know. how hard can it get! but i really suck at it. or you can say my luck at this game was really bad. like horrifying. i'd always get 14, which really really sucks cause it's neither here nor there. and what's worse is that i would have to be the first one to take the cards if you don't have enough. but what's good was that my dad was the banker. my other cousin kept saying joker, then he said no. "jonker" then i looked at him. is there such a word??? he said. dunno, i always hear my mother using it. ohhhhhhhh

and i had the greatest fun playing with all my younger cousins. seriously, the older ones are too serious. haha okayyy i'm kidding. you know that you guys are the best cousins ever.

here they are...

joie - 3 yrs old, loves to go around saying "you ahhhhhh"
janelle - 3 yrs old, loves to drink cold water
jeriel - 6 yrs old, loves his hot wheels
shannon - 10 yrs old, loves to play speed
dexter - 12 yrs old, loves to listen to pussycat dolls
lucas - 13 yrs old, loves to play the piano
joo ming - 13 yrs old, loves to talk to me (he just doesn't show it)
daniel - 14 yrs old, loves to build up his already there 6 pack (rain lookalike, only i give him credit for his way bigger eyes)
Jaclyn - (how old are you?), loves rain.

okay what haven't i covered. i don't think that i can cover it all but there was one night when lucas who can play the piano really really really realllllly well, started playing songs for us to sing. and then my uncle who had heard joie sing this song before, "Jesus, we enthrone you, we proclaim you are king. standing here in the mdst of us, we raise you up with our praise, and as we worship build your throne, and as we worship build your throne, and as we worship build you throne come lord Jesus and take your place" got lucas to play and joie to sing. at first she shy lah. then when everyone started to sing, her voice just got louder and louder until she seemed to be screaming in my ear.

she's so beautiful you know that. she'd literally jump from the floor, up into your arms, grab you tight around the head, aim for you lips, and give you great biiiig smooch. if one's not enough, she'll gladly give you another. but that's only if you're me. ha-ha. bleh.

so there.

hana yori dango

or otherwise known as meteor garden has once again got me stuck on youtube.

okay, go ahead and laugh, there i see some of you already rolling on the floor, with that look of disbelief and contempt, your faces screaming at me, "F4?? You LIKE F4??"

hey, I like the story! and f4 just happens to be a part of it, at least i'm not crazy enough to buy air tickets just so that i can be in the baggage collection area and meet them, maybe just a teensy weensy bit crazy to write about them. here. of all places.

how do i know i like the story, well, it's cheesy, it has love triangles and others say squares, actually i don't really know. but it sure brings back secondary school memories. all my class photos, at least my lower secondary ones have something to do with meteor garder, or 流星花园, or that person rocks, or this person rocks.

and in my autograph book, fuyoo, there's heaps of pictures all about f4, and at that time, lilo and stitch, which was premiering in cinemas.

but i'm pretty surprised at myself as well. over the 2-3 years, i've collected the hana yori dango manga set, almost all of it, i think i'm missing 7 books? mind you that out of 36. say 1 book was around 5-6 dollars. but i must say, it's money well spent. easy for me to say because it isn't mine.

i still remember when my dad's business wasn't doing so well one time, he wasn't too worried about it, i was. because i was afriad that i couldn't buy anymore manga. so i asked him, "does this mean that i can't buy my manga anymore?" Without hesitation, my dad said, "of course not! Your daddy can afford it."

i say it's money well spent because up till now, i still read it. mostly when i'm in the toilet. i love the holidays, did i tell you that, though i think i might've spent most of it in the toilet. on my cherry blossom pink toilet bowl.

then came the taiwan drama. and f4 was the biggest craze among the girls. i can't say i was crazy, maybe mildly? i don't know. i wasn't gaga. but i did have a poster stuck up somewhere in my room.. like on the floor under my bed.

what is so appealing about it? eye candy, you can't leave that out. a young gusty girl who isn't like the rest of the other students. and an outta this world, hard to believe but you so want to believe kind of story. maybe it was true. who knows. all i know, is that the taiwan one was good. i love the days i spent at my friends house, watching it together, and then laughing at each other about liking f4, and then rolling our eyes at each other, like we didn't give a damn about f4, the fags we'd say.

now that the japan one is out, it's a whole lot better compared to the taiwan one. i tell you Japanese have a way of doing things, wrapping things, just basically everything that make it so, japanese. some anthropologist once said from her study of japanese that the Japanese have a way of setting themselves apart from asians, not just the rest of the world. they're asians, but so different from us asians! the way hana yori dango dorama is done, the setting, the flashy cars, the humongous house, and the planning of the story is siimilar to the taiwanese one, using the manga as a guide but with a whole lot more of spunk in it. the characters actually look like, and feel like they came out from the comic book itself.

ah.. hana yori dango 2 is out now, there are a few out there who share my mindless joy, and i thank you! for sticking with me and not backing down no matter what other people say. And like always, watching this dorama has made me want to learn japanese, same old story, but i believe i will one day,. i'll just watch all the japanese drama and very soon, i'll have the gift of the japanese gab. you think?

p.s. my toilet has wireless connection too