In Malaysia, it is common for most major festivities to have open houses, from Hari Raya Puasa, to Deepavali, to Christmas, and Chinese New Year as well. I remember having a day of major open house during the Chinese New Year celebrations for as long as I had been living, and I had never missed it. My parents usually invite all their buddies to our house on the first day, and tonnes of people would come. My mum would cook up a storm and serve the food ala buffet style. This year, my mum cooked, Curry lamb, ‘Ka ca ma Chicken’, Red wine chicken, fried brocolli, Ham rolled chicken and…

Usually, my graphic design sister, Creeart will do the decorations in the house for Chinese New Year. She normally comes out with some Cartoon character hand drawn, of the animal of the year, Rats for this year. However, since she’s in confinement, I had to do some kind of deco for the house. I’m not really creative in drawing fine arts and drawing from scratch, so all I did was download some cute Rats from Deviantart and print them. My eldest sister also bought those generic red and gold house deco from the shops. So I just simply stick them around the living room, with some red packets and hanging…

Talking about the reunion dinner reminds me of that advert of the orphaned boy forced to draw about his reunion dinner in his Arts class. The boy couldn’t draw maybe because he doesn’t know what’s a reunion dinner. (Though I’m sure he could have from some form of imagination). Reunion dinners for the Chinese during Chinese New Year is probably the most important part of the whole celebration. It is a time when family members that may be living abroad and those that are near get together for a sit down dinner on Chinese New Year Eve. The dinner usually consists of the most lavish food, prawns, fish, meat, shark’s…