HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR !!!!!! Gong Xi Fa Cai !!!!

Here's to the year of Dog.

Hey everybody !! Happy Chinese New Year (in case you missed the heading) to you. Hope you have a happy and prosperous new year. May the new year bring you lots of good luck and happiness and prosperity (ang pows!!!). May you always be happy, successful and wealthy. Get good grades and good money this year !!!

Okay, i'm gonna stop now before i start to sound like Lillian Too. So, new year's. Wo-hoo. Except that i'm here in Bozeman. Twenty million miles away from home. From all the festivities and happiness. From all the reruns of old Jackie Chan (or Stephen Chow - the Monkey King show has been on every year, no kidding) movies. From all the awesomely bad CNY songs by tiny little girl groups (Awwwwwww, look at them now, all grown up). From all the CNY food (kuih kapit, the peanut cookie, pineapple tarts, prawn crackers - all the traditional food in my family. And not forgetting Shandy, my old pal Shandy). From all the gambling in the family room (lai, lai. Tek te tua 5 koh, te se 5 puat. Heh le chi puat, noh puat eh mien ee) while watching tv, listening to CNY songs, eating cookies, drinking Shandy (or Sarsi), peeling kam, receiving ang pows, talking with a mouthful of last night's steamboat, greeting family members that came late and brushing off crumbs from that new Nike shirt of course !!!! And so far from the hot and humid weather of CNY where all you wanna do is sit in your ACed living room muching away.

Oh well, that is not gonna happen this year. Might as well make it as good as possible here. this year my solution to overcoming the CNY mostalgia is to have a dinner of my own with my Malaysian friends here (and two Indonesian friends and a Japanese friend. No matter the nationality, we're all friends!! all here to celebrate the BIG CNY). turns out it is every bit as good as i thought it would be. Crazy friends who come up with the worst possible dinner topic (check)(my god, famous phrases during dinner was 'phen nen' and 'in bed', enough said), good food that were a tad too salty (check)(beggars can't be choosers), good tea to go with food (check), unwanted comments about some boy and girl (check). It was definitely a good night. Any night you can get deep fried oysters, crabs, spiced prawns, fish, too ka, sieo keh, some vegetables and something liang soup and rice for only 13 bucks(including tips le) is a good night. And not forgetting the sesame balls (the ones that you could find in dim sum. that was good stuff). Especially here in Montana where you are about ten thousand miles away from the ocean. Good night, food was good, company was good (got to practice speaking my Hokkien again. Unfortunately i got laughed at when i wanted to tell the waitress to press the camera longer in Mandarin. Instead of saying "An chiu ee tien", I said "An toah ee tien", causing quite a ruckus from my Mandarin speaking friends). Anyway, fun night. And we capped it off with a movie, "Tristan and Isolde". Not a very CNY movie (unlike the Cantonese movie - erm what's it called again kh?? too long ago de) but it was good. A lot of war and stuff like that.

Well here are the pics from dinner. I would like to ask anyone who is viewing the pics to keep the weight comments to yourself (unless it is in the positive direction, then you are most certainly welcomed). Well, GONG XI FA CAI again and XIN NIEN KUAI LE.






Try to spot 'Willie' in this last pic Elaine and Willett. And kh, spot 'Wei Jern's bro' (from PFS, that annoying guy in 7th south) in the last pic. Note the t-shirt theme going on here.


Dream