The Year of the Green Rooster

Reading and looking at other people's blogs about the coming Chinese New Year puts me in the mood. This year Chinese New Year falls on 9th February. It shall be the start of the Year of the Green Rooster. This will be baby's first Chinese New Year(CNY) and toddler's third. I will probably succumb to buying those cute little red outfits for them and retailers will laugh all the way to the bank fleecing stupid parents like me who will pay for tiny little pieces of clothing that will be worn only for a few weeks. After CNY, its too impractical to let the little ones adorn those uncomfortable little cheongsams etc and by the next year they would have outgrown them and there we go again getting new ones. Oh well, this shall be only for a few years after which they will tell me "Puh..puh..puh..please Mum, don't make me wear that!!!"

I love taking a walk down memory lane. CNY as a young girl is the best. I don't remember many CNYs with mum because she passed away when I was 10 although I recall helping her bake cookies. Later on, we would travel all the way from Kuantan back to Penang to spend our CNY. This journey took 10 sometimes 12 hours on the trunk roads before we had the highways. And we, all 5 kids would fight all the way back. Hey! Put 5 kids in close confinement for several hours and thats what you get. We would count car number plates for entertainment and tease second sis that she is bullying her relatives when we pass by skinny cows by the roadside because she was born in the year of the Ox. Second sis always threw up from car sickness. Somehow she was more prone to motion sickness than the rest of us.

We would take the ferry to Penang as we didn't have the bridge then. It was always fun to get down from the car to feel the breeze and watch the water splashing the sides of the ferry after our long ride. And even more exciting to watch the buildings getting nearer and nearer before hopping back into the car. The car always made a satisfactory "toom toom" sound when we drove out of the ferry onto the mainland and we knew we had arrived. So exciting! I miss the ferry rides.

To be continued....