Monday, January 30, 2006

Its been a quiet first two days of the new year of the Dog.

Wait a minute, this sounds like my intro for the last blog as well.

The few hours before Saturday midnight, the barrage of smses started invading. Its amazing where those Chinese scrolls and dui lians came from. I doubt if our generation of dual-language educated yuppies, and younger guppies, can come up with such eloquent proses. Maybe they were imported from China or Taiwan ... Somehow you can tell which are the more poetic ones, and others a little more crass ... The most important thing is the thought of sending. It is especially thoughtful when you get wishes from non-Chinese. Maybe I should send Hari Raya greeting cards next time ...

Speaking of greeting cards, it is important to have some on display outside in the living room, you know, around the telephone, the vcd / dvd players, other flat surfaces, etc. Surly a symbol of well-wishes of love and prosperity from friends and relatives who bother and care to write, sign, stick stamp, and post the cards across twenty to thirty kilometres across the island ... In this age of smses and emails, greeting cards are such a rare and precious commodity indeed.

I just found out that Haargen Daaz is not Scandinavian, but American! Just like Ben & Jerry's! I should reconsider my affiliations for sinful ice-cream ...

Anyway, my tummy is not in its best shape since mid last week. Not sure what I ate wrong. Hence I have not been enjoying my food, my reunion dinner.
How can? This most important meal of the year, and I am not enjoying the meat, the chilli, grrr ...
Well, important to serve the tummy into combat mode asap.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4646010.stm

There are less visits this year, both directions. Some passing aways over the past year, hence there are less relatives coming over, and less homes to visit as well. First night went over to aunt's house for "light" dinner. That's about it ...

I am absolutely grateful for Shi Ling for asking Shao Lang and I out for Starbucks. I felt like damp laundry being brought out to the sun to dry ... for want of a better description ... not that the dark green umbrella from Starbucks managed to block most of the sun away from us, not that there was much sun out there at 5pm. It was nice to meet and chat. Mind you, I don't engage in such luxurious activity often. Most of the time, people like me have difficulties matching up with friends' free time. Hence the missing out of most group activities ... So, it was marvellous to catch up. I shudder to think when I will meet them again. Late July perhaps?

The other feature of long holidays like this one; the absolute lack of quality programmes on television, aka tcs programming. Since we can't possibly be subscribing to every HBO or Cinemax or Variety channels, we are stuck to the humble channels 8 and U. I can't remember watching a programme over the past three nights, from the beginning to the end. I guess the FA Cup matches do not count; the Australian Open Final do not count; Zong Yi Da Ge Da do not count ... I have often complained that the reason for poor programming was to force us to go out of the house to seek other forms of entertainment ... which was why I was at Starbucks ...

Frankly, I can't wait for normal life to return.

But the red packets can continue to flow in. Hah hah.

♥ 10:17 pm