Pineapple tarts and Cantonese dramas

What comes into mind when Chinese New Year when it crosses your path?

Ang paus, fire crackers and lion dances?
Or the dreadful long winding journey back hometown?

When CNY crosses my mind, I don't laugh as if its the best thing that happened in the year. Instead, I smile. Why?

Only once a year we're reminded of what Chinese New Year means to us. How we enjoyed it with our once innocent young minds, running around with lighted up fireworks despite the buzzing blood sucking mosquito's and crooning crickets.

This festive season holds a different meaning for each and everyone. Some may say it's a reason to splurge on new clothes,drink and gamble.

For me, Chinese New Year every year is sort of like just another holiday. A ritual. Once a year, I acknowledge my heritage and endure the boredom of sitting around and having no one to talk to during the 'family reunions' (everyone's getting so old..its either no one's in school anymore or they speak fluent Chinese and hardly any English). The only plus side would be getting those nice thick red packets and the amount usually decreases every year since the petrol price is increasing rapidly.

Apart from that, it never fails to remind me of the juicy mandarin oranges, ba kua, inquisitive aunts, bratty cousins, ham sup uncles, relatives of all ages gathered around the tube box to watch daily hokkien drama series, hard to resist chinese delicacy, waterfall like showers, and yes, the pressure cooker climate.

Chinese New Year also repeats the scene of dad yelling WAKE UP without over doing it yet just enough for us siblings to find our heads hidden between the folds of the blanket and proceed to grunt a 'yeaaaaa, coming' and promptly falling back asleep. Later on, grandma fusses over her granddaughter's lack of appetite for breakfast while grandpa is hidden behind the morning chinese papers and us sitting blurry and unfocused in between morning conversations,

Without fail, all the aunts will come together as a flock and after the passing out of red packets, will proceed to ask me which college I'm attending. It never fails. And it never stops amazing them that I'm still in undecided because all my cousins are like, graduating from university or close to doing so. To that, I will solemnly reply, I'm still undecided, but I've National Service awaiting me in March.

And here I shall clarify once again, I am pure Chinese. My 'Szetoo' is as Chinese as a Chinese is. My dad's a hokkien and my mom's a cantonese and they're both as Chinese as Chinese can be.

I'm not Japanese or Korean, neither am I European or pan-Asian. So please, please, stop saying I look like one. More importantly, I do not look similar to an ang kong kia for that is an insult.

In contrast, I do not have the korean-ness look (whatever it is), neither do I have big round eyes and I do not pride myself in not knowing how to speak a chinese dialect properly.

Let me tell you this, I have great pride in my name as its quite unique. and is pronounced wrongly 97% of the time in this country. Most of the time, hardly anyone's heard of my name.

My ironic cousin claims that the size of my head has shrink immensely with my recent haircut. Let me ensure you that the size of my HUGE ego has not shrink with my head, and I therefore must protest to that statement. My head size is fine, thank you.


Anyways, wishing everyone a very HAPPY Chinese New Year and may you not get indigestion by all the food and scrumptious cookies laid out before you every other hour by your aunts, grandaunts, cousins, second cousins, grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers...... heehee