Ok, the previous blog was just me whining and some thoughts about the festival. Let's now look in-depth at some of the happenings during this supposedly festive season. CNY Eve as usual, stayed in Singapore, went to my grandmother's place where we had our reunion dinner with the rest of the family. And as usual, I help prepare the food and in particular, I help slice up the abalone...*grinz*...so you lot can guess what filled my stomach that night. CNY day 1 itself, morning woke up erm...sufficiently early to prepare for visit to my grandmother's house before heading to Malaysia. Everyone's still preparing so while waiting, the hand-written script of BS108 tutorial by xuweixin was borned. Lunch was settled at grandmother's place and I got my 1st red packet for this year...lunch was a strangely familiar sight from dinner the night before....lol. But nevertheless, there were some new dishes...and there was 1 last slice of abalone amongst the vegetables!! How could I have missed that the night before??!!
Anyway, headed for the customs into Malaysia. Ok, a little bit of my history... firstly, i'm not a Malaysian...the next person to say i'm a Malaysian again will get roared at. I'm a made-in-singapore product. My father's singaporean but my mother's malaysian, so i've got relatives on both sides of the causeway. There's something I want to complain here though. The damn malaysian customs are SHIT! Sorry if there are malaysians here ok, but your customs really sucks...can you even imagine people queuing up until the shelter way outside of the main immigration building?? There are at least a few hundred people stuck at the customs but with only less than 20 slowcroaches on duty? The air-cons are not switched on and to make things worse, ventilation's real bad and people just fainted while queuing and they still don't bother doing anything about it? And on the walls, there're long, big banners saying: Welcome to Malaysia, Visit Malaysia 2007" and right in the middle, we have this ironic scene. I really think those Malaysian officials ought to be ashamed of how they handled things during this festive peak duration. For 10+ years i've been going through that screwed-up customs, for 10+years I repeatedly see this scene. It took me 2 hours to move a distance of less than 100m, how's that? I honestly think their proposal for change submitted every year is "We open all counter to clear passport". Wake up you inefficient fellows...there's such a thing called EFFICIENCY in english if there's none in bahasa melayu. I'm not even bothered if PM Abdullah sees this...I have faith that if he is to see such a scenario, he too will be put to shame and question what the hell are his men doing.
That's just a side issue...so we reached Yong Peng(永平), Malaysia where my mother came from. Went back to my maternal grandmother's house at a village called Lam Lee(南利新村) where the gathering is for so many years. In fact, there wasn't supposed to be any gathering at that house as my grandmother has passed on. But since my uncle's coming back from Taiwan for this CNY, it was an abrupt decision for everyone.
Cousins, aunts and uncles and everyone gathers around in the old house...below are some clips and photos...let them speak for themselves:
This is 1 part of the living room and the photos on the walls are my maternal grandmother and grandfather. I've never seen my grandfather though...even my father don't have the chance to meet him.
Anyway, headed for the customs into Malaysia. Ok, a little bit of my history... firstly, i'm not a Malaysian...the next person to say i'm a Malaysian again will get roared at. I'm a made-in-singapore product. My father's singaporean but my mother's malaysian, so i've got relatives on both sides of the causeway. There's something I want to complain here though. The damn malaysian customs are SHIT! Sorry if there are malaysians here ok, but your customs really sucks...can you even imagine people queuing up until the shelter way outside of the main immigration building?? There are at least a few hundred people stuck at the customs but with only less than 20 slowcroaches on duty? The air-cons are not switched on and to make things worse, ventilation's real bad and people just fainted while queuing and they still don't bother doing anything about it? And on the walls, there're long, big banners saying: Welcome to Malaysia, Visit Malaysia 2007" and right in the middle, we have this ironic scene. I really think those Malaysian officials ought to be ashamed of how they handled things during this festive peak duration. For 10+ years i've been going through that screwed-up customs, for 10+years I repeatedly see this scene. It took me 2 hours to move a distance of less than 100m, how's that? I honestly think their proposal for change submitted every year is "We open all counter to clear passport". Wake up you inefficient fellows...there's such a thing called EFFICIENCY in english if there's none in bahasa melayu. I'm not even bothered if PM Abdullah sees this...I have faith that if he is to see such a scenario, he too will be put to shame and question what the hell are his men doing.
That's just a side issue...so we reached Yong Peng(永平), Malaysia where my mother came from. Went back to my maternal grandmother's house at a village called Lam Lee(南利新村) where the gathering is for so many years. In fact, there wasn't supposed to be any gathering at that house as my grandmother has passed on. But since my uncle's coming back from Taiwan for this CNY, it was an abrupt decision for everyone.
Cousins, aunts and uncles and everyone gathers around in the old house...below are some clips and photos...let them speak for themselves:
This is 1 part of the living room and the photos on the walls are my maternal grandmother and grandfather. I've never seen my grandfather though...even my father don't have the chance to meet him.
This is another part of the living room. There's just too many people around, so by night time the living room becomes a bedroom.
This is the room I slept in though...haha...those 3 on the floor are my male cousins. Damn lot of mosquitoes...they having a feast while I sleep.
Anyone seen an uncut pineapple before?? There's plenty over here...
This is my youngest cousin, Nicholas. He was so cute and chubby when young...now already 12 years old...damn, I feel old...he tried getting his mother to get him a RM1000 hamster...I told them that's either a golden hamster or simply a CHINCHILLA!
Ok, I must make special mention here about these 2 dishes. The black gooey stuff is Lor Mee and the other is Butter Fried Sotong. Both are damn nice dishes. There was a BBQ Stingray too...forgot to snapped a picture of that. The Lor Mee is definitely not the type that we eat in Singapore. In fact, I never eat Lor Mee in Singapore. If you ever see Weixin eating Lor Mee in Singapore, that's an impostor. This Lor Mee is the specialty of the place, real nice...drool...but too bad I only get to eat it once a year.
This is something most of you have not played before...FIRECRACKERS!!! But these fly though...you lot are missing out on lots of fun...
The dull night sky was colourfully lighted up by fireworks. Not some fancy fireworks you get to see at the Esplanade in Singapore, but something plain and simple close to you...
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