Happy Chinese New Year!

chinese new year wishes from camb:

like how all sojourns form enclaves in a foreign land, we camb first years gathered at st john's for reunion dinner when home is half a world away. we tried to bring the flavours of that part of the world which we are so familiar with to this dinner of special significance, and i must say it was done beautifully, largely owing to the mega effort jinyang and ryan put into planning the steamboat dinner and lugging all the groceries back from chormei. so it was an evening of scooping fishballs and wantan from the soup, eating kangkung (which i have not seen since last october) with thai chili sauce, and seeing pan-fried japanese tofu, all in the midst of the oh-so-festive chinese new year songs.

dinner started late at 8pm because the people with the food (we from magd) came late-- like how dinner at home starts late because my family reaches my uncle's house late. the food was great, and everyone was stuffed full because the cooks (ryan, jinyang, jiechao, weishen) put in long hours to prepare it and to make sure that it is in abundance--like how my aunt will prepare the dinner and all the chinese new year cookies to last us kids for the next few days. jit ern's room was filled with laughter, the loudest being dingdong's-- like how the living room at my uncle's house will be, especially when john laughs at the funny movies. all in all, the reunion dinner was great, and was as "chinese new yeary" as it could be. why, we even had lo sang:


video is courtesy of jinyang =)

this was the first time i didn't have new year eve reunion dinner with my family, and there is indeed that strange feeling that something is amissed. when i was in primary school and had to write essays about cny celebration, all the model essays i refer to would definitely include lines about relatives who work abroad rushes back just in time for dinner, or something similar to emphasised the reunion dinner. even tv adverts stress on the dinner, like the one in the elders' home where the old ladies all sat around the table bragging about their sons' achievements only to hide their pain that these sons don't even visit them on new year's eve, or the funny one about the old-fashioned grandmother who made sure everything was in the auspicious red and had the family around the dining table waiting for her grandson from america, only to find that he was red from head to toe but brought back a black girlfriend! these remind me again and again how family togetherness is a strongly rooted chinese tradition, and how blessed are those who have a family to share a meal with. but it has never hit me this hard before now that i have been through a new year without the precious company of family. how much i miss all of them suddenly!

it is unlikely that i will be at home for cny for the next two years. then, hopefully i get to spend a nice long one during my year of attachment, and hopefully nothing much has changed yet, and that cny at home is still the same cny as i know it. then it's five years of abroad living again. by the time settle down properly in a place not too far away from home, i might already be someone's wife and be eating reunion dinner with his family instead. is all this part of growing up, a reminder of how precious moments are transient?

anyway, it is indeed by god's grace that there is still a new year for me, and that this new year is a challenging one, one in which my weakness is apparent and that i can rely on his strength instead.

happy new year eveyone! xin1 nian2 jin4 bu4, shen1 ti3 jian4 kang1, wan4 shi4 sheng4 yi4