Was haben Sie in der neue Jahr gemacht?

Viel! viel! Essen und trinken! Tanzen und schlafen! (es tut mir leid, ich hat eine Deutsche essay geschrieben)

Just to recap the New Year festivities. On New Year's eve, Lionel and I bundled ourselves up nice and warm and took the train to Walton-on-Thames where my aunty lives with her two cats, Molly and Henry. I like steamboat, and I like it even better when my aunt does it with loads of prawns and cuttlefish! We got on really well with my aunt's friend's daughters who were our age. That was rather strange. I don't ever get off to a good start with girls. I'm much better with guys because you don't get the feeling that they're sizing you up, unless they're trying to hit on you. But these two girls were just so chatty and we had a pretty flowing conversation from animal activists to the Da Vinci code.

New Year's day was slightly more relaxed than usual. It helped that it fell on a Sunday, of which I spent half a day on my Control Engineering report. The potluck at my place was a little last minute, but since Nicole and I were set on not spending Chinese New Year with housemates we aren't extremely close to, thus we had the Malaysians and Fidel over to my place to tuck in on a delicious feast of Yee Sang, spring rolls, Four Seasons duck, roast duck popiah, nian gou, agar-agar and the most un-Chinesy of all - Chocolate Fondue!!! (The story of my fondue pot will come soon in a separate post about my birthday... when I finally sit down and write it). I didn't have to cook a single thing (apart from deep frying spring rolls) and yet received a free flow of compliments on the great food throughout the night. I love these guys. It's just too easy to con all of them into thinking I'm such a marvelous cook. I was particularly happy that Ayish, the vegetarian, had enough to eat! Years of having to plan vegan appropriate dishes for Sugi and Maggie have paid off!

And so that was new year - playing with the iDog, laughing at Tock trying to sing in Mandarin, and accidently pouring chocolate fondue on spring rolls. A good start to a dog year. I've already got two pups to look after - Ba Kua my nintendog and now the iDog. Lets see how this goes.

Chinese Whispers

*Warning* Sentimental puddles ahead. May splash.

For whatever reason, it seems as if it was just last year that we were all in grand old 538 in Penang. Our grandparents' dilapitated colonial mansion has no other name but 538 (think Jean Valjean's - 24601), and 538 it shall stay.

I have no other memory of Chinese New Year apart from the painful 4 hour ride to 538, in a car filled to the brim with mandarin oranges, abalones, lap cheong, kuih kapit, fresh fish and children. Three children to be precise. One who would swallow books whole, one with an endless amount of (not always politically correct) jokes, and one who always complained her siblings were taking up more than their share of the back seat.

4 hours later the children, oranges, abalones, lap cheong, kuih kapit, and fresh fish would be spit out onto the driveway of 538, not necessarily in that order. And then Operation Spotless would begin, and in military fashion aunties would bark orders:
"Who forgot to clean behind the aircond vents?" "Grey is unacceptable, I want the fans white!" "What do you mean you can't reach that cobweb? What do you think the ladder is for?" "A scout helps at all times, including Chinese New Year" "No one gets angpows without working for it first!"

And just like an Etopian shoe factory, children of all ages could be seen working their little hearts out - climbing on chairs atop tables, wielding vacuum cleaners and rags or beating mattresses in the scorching sun or drowning nasty coloured cushion covers in buckets of soapy water.

But as soon as the sun sets and 538 is gleaming as much as its old walls can bear, it's time for the feast of the century (if we don't count Christmas, and popiah parties and laksa parties and the obligatory celebration when someone comes back from overseas). 3 generations crowd around the old dining table with just enough space in between to raise a chopstick and poke the person next to you.

And then we tuck into the only dinner my grandmother ever cooks each year. Don't ask me what she spends the other three hundred and sixty four days doing, but when grandma only cooks this rarely, you shut up and enjoy the overflowing plates with fancy names that are a mumbo jumbo of prosperity and happiness and fortune and luck and buddhas.

As soon as the plates are cleared and the mandarins have been passed out, then begins the great kitchen war. Too many women in one kitchen is just a bad idea. My grandmother knows that too and leaves it to her vocally expressive daughters and daughter in laws to plan the New Year's day meal. The children too are no where within earshot, for if caught it could mean an evening of chopping shallots or shelling peas.

Instead the young cousins lounge about in the massive lawn that stretches an entire football field with room to spare. They'll sit on the swing and tell stories of yore, of love bourne and lost of dreams yet to unfold. And when the authorities still allowed it, they lit up the sky with a display of fireworks and red fire crackers that gave the little ones nightmares.

But it's all for a good cause. Because when the morning comes, nightmares are forgotten and little red packets have mysteriously appeared under our pillows. Everyone fights for the one and only bathroom in the house. New, shiny red clothes appear in abundance and the children recite New Year phrases, the rare bits of Chinese that has been drummed into their heads a week beforehand. There is plenty of tea to go around and a cup of tea to an elder is a password for receiving an angpow.

And the children know they'll never get more than a few dollars in their ang pows, but its the excitement, the totalling up of accounts and the feeling of new crisp notes in their hands. And after a hearty breakfast of radish cake and in more recent times: hong bak with gee niah kuih, the door bell rings and guest after guest comes pouring in. Our grandfather being the eldest in the family and a respected court interpretor, sits like a grand duke in his chair as friends and relatives come to pay their respects.

The girls like young maidens flutter in and out of the guestroom with tea and sweet trays and coequettish smiles in hand. The boys just try not to break anything, because the brooms have been hidden and grandma's long drawn scoldings just aren't worth it.

There is no gambling in 538. The governor and governess run a respectable Cantonese family where the young ones should be seen and not heard, and when seen should either engage in the most intelligent of conversations or else be seen reading a good book. But when their backs are turned, away run the children to an afternoon of Hong Kong movies on tv. No one ever gets tired of Kungfu reruns. Certainly not us.

And before they know it, it's dinner time and again three generations try to squeeze into one table. Voices grow louder and drift into the night and one more family has ushered in the new year.

*************

I start to hallucinate terribly when the withdrawal symptoms of spending three years away from home begin to kick in.

Gong Hei Fatt Choy!!!

courtesy of Kee's World, The Star

The excited puppy in me would like to wish all of you a Happy and Prosperous New Year and may the year of the dog bring you the loyalty and companionship of loved ones! Xin Nian Kuai Le, Wan Shi Ru Yi, Nian Nian You Yu! etc. etc. *exchanges mandarin oranges*

Control Freaks and Rock Chicks

I'm doing everything... but my Control Engineering report!

Nevertheless I thought I should do a plug for my latest musical discovery - Keren Deberg. Chicks with a guitar rule. Chicks who pen their own songs are even better. Chicks with a squeaky lilt to their vocals? You know I'd love them!

Being the Bic Runga, Fiona Apple and company fan... and also a real cheapo, I have been downloading her music all afternoon and although its not as raw as I would like it... at least she's got more of an edge than Hilary Duff.

Mmm... Hilary Duff... I love that girl and her lashes. That's all you need to attract 20 year olds like Sachpal to Lizzie Mcguire.

Oh and if you've got the time and like acoustic guitars and happen to be suffering from a broken heart... Colin Hay's just amazing!

In times of duress Charl reverts to Manglish (the one where she speaks English and her coursemates don't understand)

Yalah! I know lah! It's been very quiet around here and it's probably because I'm lazy to do a proper post with proper photos and etc, sans the whining about deadlines and workload stress.


But on a whim, after a hell-raising week, I decided I had had enough and spent 2 hours making onde-onde. I know the picture looks lovely, but they didn't turn out like that! You want to know why? Because Lionel refused to go back to the shops and get green food dye! So I ended up with a box of white puffy snowballs, which didn't look too bad actually and tasted quite good, until we put them into the fridge overnight and they became rock hard. Next time I'll dye 'em pink.

Monday was a real treat. I woke up at 6.30 just to get to Sandip's place in time to be driven all the way to Farnborough by 9.30 for the IBM Business Challenge Semifinals. We didn't win, but I discovered my talents lie in inspiring holographic handphones, building paper warships, drawing logos and creating and directing a sketch in 20 minutes. My talents for business? Zero!

Right, I'd love to chat more but there's this seriously jialat Control lab report to write up which out of 25 pages I have only finished about 5 half empty ones. Here's to the late nights and mugs of coffee! Jia You!

p/s: I was at West End last night watching Chicago. All that jazz!!! Dayaamm... I miss peforming, or organising performances. Here lies a sorely retired Malaysian Night scriptwriter/creativeconsultant/publicitymanageress wishing we could relive the fun moments one more time (you know without all the yelling over rehearsals and prima donna attitudes and post midnight emergency phonecalls)

Watch this space!

It's been a busy first week of uni (as expected) .
Things to blog about in the near future:
1. My birthday dinner and strange birthday present themes
2. My Marriot dinner sponsored by Barclays Capital
3. My US trip followed by photos... eventually
4. Ba Kua, my nintendog

The list is for me, not you.

Goodnight now. The world is listening.

Another year older?

Repeat after me:
Tomorrow is going to be normal.
I will wake up after 10 and jump out of bed in horror because its mid morning.
I will go for German at noon followed by Databases in the afternoon.
I will come home and cook something nice for dinner.
I will not wash the dishes because I hate washing dishes because when I have to wash dishes I end up cleaning the whole kitchen.
I will do some Matlab, watch some tv, take a bath with my new Egyptian bath milk (you're allowed to admit you're jealous of me) and then I'll tuck Lionel into bed, program abit more...
and that will be the story of my life, albeit another year older.

Oh and if you'd like to make my day - I really would like that Lychee and Jasmine ironing water from Sainsbury's that costs 89p and a nice photo frame for my new family photos. I don't really need anything else, Lionel's been offering to buy me everything from detergent to discounted Body Shop Christmas packs. And if you can't do that, just don't bully me tomorrow. It'll make me feel so loved!

Random-ness!

This has got to be the most simple and narcissistically fulfulling meme in awhile (tagged by Fidel the neighbourhood quirk).

5 random facts about myself

1. My parents taught me to read at the age of one, tell the time at the age of 2 and paint still life with crayons and water colours at the age of 4. My cousin who was a year older couldn't read till she was 7. Guess who was the little family favourite?
(Don't get me wrong though, I love my cousin to bits and followed her everywhere!)

2. I think roses are pretentious. My favourite flower is a carnation which is my late grandmother's favourite.

3. When I was 16, I fell in love with restoring heritage buildings on a visit to the Cheung Fatt Tze mansion in Penang. I still believe I will one day help to restore the ruins of Suffolk House - built by Francis Light for his common law wife. Many romantic paintings of it hang in the Penang Museum, although right now it looks like something out of Jungle Book!

4. I have a motion sickness problem related to my hearing. In the evenings passing cars and loud noises scare me and I can't stand when I'm on the tube unless I absolutely have to.

5. In 20 years I hope to be able to have enough power (and money) to revamp the entire Malaysian Public Library system to one which will not only contain books of a higher standard (I say 'higher' so as not to offend the current government administration who often think of themselves as perfect demi-gods) where preferably more than half of them will be in English (the books, not the demi-gods) with credible authors and not just half torn Nancy Drew books that were dumped at the library steps when the kids left home. I also envision a Public Library that will become a centre of wholesome activities for young children and impressionable teenagers who believe 'c u 8ter u knnccbbbq' is a sentence. I don't know what bbq is. Amar came up with it.
And I haven't been drinking. Promise!

And I shall tag - EVERYBODY!!! I'm not choosy.

Thank God, one of us got in!

I'm not a big fan of Oxbridge - number one because my parents put so much pressure on me to apply and number two because I really didn't want to go to another Raffles-like institute of excellance and number three - take me out of the city?? Hell no!

So to whet my parent's appetite for at least one graduate from Oxbridge, I sacrificed my little brother.

Anyway he was over the moon when the offer from Oxford came in. I was too! I always knew my brother deserved it, after his heart wrenching disappointment when he didn't get into RJC just like his sister did. And I'm also very happy that he won't be in Imperial, running to my house everytime he wants a good meal, or just a meal and someone to don his socks! My brother can't look after himself. He believes that's what sisters are for.

So now that my parents will have in their hands one graduate from Imperial and one from Oxford, my 15 year old sister fears having to go to Cambridge to complete the holy trinity. Tsk! Over achieving families!

Into Two Thousand and Six

It's hard to keep up with this blog. But I'll try my very best after spending a very busy day cooking a teriyaki beef don lunch and lounging around in the living room watching episodes of Frasier on TV. I love to savour my bouts of inactivity. I don't get enough of them.

Yesterday Lionel and I spent almost the entire day on the couch in our PJs watching back to back episodes of Little Britain. Yeah but no but yea but...Shaddup! Amar can vouch for it. He was the only person who had taken a bath by noon - a real surprise that was!

The last few days of 2005 weren't anything spectacular if it wasn't for Kim spending 2 days with the folks at Longridge Road. I bet she believes my house to be down right mad and that we do alot of laundry! (I'm just done with the last load of post New York laundry and this weeks clothes are just glaring at me, begging to be washed!)

We finally gave our first house party on New Year's Eve. Yes, everyone's been waiting to see our flat for quite awhile. And no one is to tell Rich Arckless that I once again committed the crime of not inviting him to one of my 'Malaysian' parties. I would have, if I wasn't deathly afraid of the neighbours complaining of the commotion coming from the fifty noisy kids in flat 2. It doesn't help that my neighbours give us that 'Oh, you're Asian!' look and you can almost see them cringing at the idea of illegal Chinese immigrants harbouring rats and ajinomoto. Oh, and that's why I didn't tell any of my coursemates about the party either. Oops! I'll bake cookies when term starts. I promise! And make spring rolls?

Anyway back to the party. The popiah (unfried spring rolls) was a success! I almost whooped for joy when I could see the bottom of the bowl of joo hoo char (turnip and carrot mixed veg thing) by 9.30pm, and then my good hostess persona kicked in and I freaked out about not having enough food. Thank goodness for the overflowing bowls of rojak (Malaysian fruit salad with prawn paste dressing) and the Tiramisu I made the night before just because I could. The Tiramisu recipe is of course accredited to Darwin the ISE Tai Kor (big brother - colloqially: Chinese Mafia boss) without whom I could not gloat at the many many compliments I received (and that's not just for my Tiramisu!)

Amar of course lived up to the position of drink marshall with a free flow of Pimms and lychee screwdrivers (with real lychee bits from Fulham market) throughout the night. I'll give him points for trying to get me drunk, but it didn't work and would have been too expensive and no one else would have gotten any drinks. I must say drinking sure saves my having to put on any make-up though.

It was really great to be able to see CL and Tock and Nicole and Wei Kiat and Soha and well, everyone again! You sure miss out on so much gossip when you're travelling around the US! And it was great that Kim and her friend Emily could join us. And of course Fidel had to grace the occasion with a brand new haircut! You go, Fidzy!! I can't believe how long Kim and I went on telling Fidel about our Odac days. We even brought out old photos, photos I hadn't seen for half a year, photos I'd forgotten about! Reliving the memories was exhilarating! I didn't realise how much I'd washed out of my memory after just 3 years!

Anyway, it was much too cold to make our way down to the London Eye to watch fireworks, and besides the panaromic view displayed on our tv was just perfect. Tock's confetti popper things added just the right touch as well and we ushered in the new year on that note and snuggled into a warm night under our duvets.

Except for Amar. We forgot to give him a blanket as he froze on the sofabed.