Water Snake of Change

Like every year, my family will go up to Penang to celebrate the Chinese New Year. This year is the year of the Snake (water snake). This year's Chinese New Year is pretty different from how it used to be.

Day1
Early Saturday morning, we left for Penang later than planned at 4a.m. We had actually planned to leave at 3a.m. Through the whole journey up to Penang, I was asleep because heck, I lack sleep. We stopped in Ipoh to have brunch at a dim sum restaurant before continuing our journey. After settling into my grandparents' home, I helped my grandma set up the Chinese lanterns with help from my uncle. It was the first time our family went to a western restaurant for our reunion dinner. The restaurant was located at the new reclaimed land parts of Penang (I don't know the parts of Penang, don't ask me) with a fine dining theme which wasn't really fine dine. We went home after dinner and at around 10.30p.m. people started to release fireworks. My dogs were barking and whining in fright from the loud noise. Hahaha. At around 11.30p.m., there was a power outage. Five houses in a row lost electricity. Since it was dark and there was nothing to do, we went out to see the fireworks. By that time, the sky was filled with fireworks from every direction I could see from the porch. At least six houses had fireworks display, the nearest being the neighbor five houses down the road. The fireworks around filled the sky for a long time until 1a.m. nonstop. It was like an orchestra of fireworks played by a group of excited musicians. When the fireworks died down, we all went to bed.

The electricity came back on I have no idea what time. I was disturbed in my sleep when the electricity came back (my sisters and my dad were cheering loudly and the ceiling light was on) but I went back to sleep the second I woke up.

Day2
After getting dressed in the morning, I went down to the living room to spend time before my family goes out to visit our relatives. Several relatives from my mom's side of the family (actually my grandfather's siblings and their children) came to visit. Later in the afternoon, my family went out to visit my dad's brother (dad's 4th older brother, my 4th uncle). We learned that my cousin had a second child, a boy. During our visit, more relatives came to visit as well, they were a cousin and a nephew's family. The thing about visiting my paternal families is that the issue about 'what do our kids acknowledge each other' and as always, it's always nephews calling someone younger than them uncle, in such case, my sisters and me. My nephew has children already so that makes me a grand-uncle and my parents are great-grand-uncle/aunt. I think I've mentioned this before in last year's CNY blog post.

Day3
In the morning, more relatives came to visit my grandparents' house. My family went to my cousin's house (where my dad's 2nd oldest sister, my 2nd aunt) is living at. My cousins always has large buffet lunches at her house and invites everyone from my dad's side of the family to eat. Almost everyone was there and the house was so packed and noisy. After everyone has eaten, my nephews (yes, older than me) called everyone out to the porch to take a family photo. It was the first time we had a family photo together.

Day4
In the morning, we went to visit some of my grandfather's siblings. At lunch we took my grandparents to Sushi King. After lunch, my family went to my uncle's house (dad's 3rd oldest brother, my 3rd uncle). During the visit, it rained heavily so we had to stay longer than planned and had to postpone other visits because it got too late.

Day5
After breakfast, the plan was to go to my mom's friend's house but my 3rd uncle called my dad and told him about a monk going to bless the family and he invited us to get the blessing too so we rushed my slowpoke sisters and we got there in time. After the blessing and prayers, we had lunch and we chatted some more. After that we had to drop my mom at her meeting with her school friends whom she has not seen for the past 31 years. The rest of us went back to my grandparents' home and rested. I was working a little on my assignment and there was Caught on Camera: Disaster in Japan on tv. It was about the huge earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011. I always find myself brought to tears when I watch the clips of the disaster. There were several video clips shown on the program that I've never seen before like the footage from a tourist on the top of Tokyo Tower during the quake, the sailboats that got swept into the highways and devastated people looking for their lost families after the waters resided. After the show ended, we left the house again to pick up my mom after her reunion was over and then we went to visit my parents' friend. We were there until late in the evening, almost night.

Day6
While waiting for my family to be ready to go out, I was playing with Patches when I had to blow my nose. So I did and out came a lot of thick and clear mucus. It was so thick and clear it was like I had gel in my hand.

Anyway, we went to my visit my aunt (mom's older sister). After that we took my grandparents to Gurney Plaza to eat at Chili's. It's been a really long time since I last went to Gurney Plaza, like 10 years ago, I can hardly remember anything about that place. It's Valentines Day so there were a lot of couples around. While we were eating, it started to shower, because Gurney Plaza is by the seafront, the winds were strong and you could see all the rubbish on the floor being swept up and tossed around in the air by the wind. People sitting in the open-air parts of the restaurants and cafes around quickly went indoors before the rain came. After lunch we walked around the mall for about an hour before going to Tesco. I manage to exchange the SonicGear earphones I bought before leaving for Penang at Tesco Mutiara Damansara for a Philips one because the SonicGear one was too big for my ears, how the heck do people wear 15mm wide earphones? It hurts! The new earphones are not as good as my stolen iPod earphones though. Maybe I'll buy the new iPod earphones some time in the near future. My mom bought seven tubs of yoghurt because it was on sale and we couldn't fit them in my grandma's fridge so we all finished two tubs as dessert while watching tv.

Day7
We woke up early to go pray at the Guanyin Temple we always go to. The front part of the temple was under renovation so it was hard to go into the temple with the crowd. After we were done with the prayers we went to buy chicken rice to eat at home. We went around Penang for a bit because my grandma had some errands, we went to the Kwantung and Tengzhau assosiation building and the general hospital to collect medicine for my grandpa. After lunch, I did some assignment and watched some anime. My family went out because my mom had a dentist appointment and my sisters wanted to get their hair cut and my dad had to drive them so I stayed back. My grandma also went out soon after. I got tired and dozed off in the living room until evening when my family came back home.

That was pretty much it for my Chinese New Year holiday this year. It was a lot quiet because my uncle and his family didn't come back because my cousin was stationed for National Service in Singapore and my other uncle and his family went back early to their floral shop for Valentines Day sales.

Before we went up to Penang, my right wisdom tooth was growing so it was hurting and disturbing me a lot. It have already grown out of the gums but there's this part of my gum that is sticking out like an appendage and it bothers me a lot. Also, the right row of my teeth hurt a couple of times.

While going around Penang, we passed by a lot of places like my mom's primary and secondary schools, the school some of my uncle and aunts went to, the house my dad grew up in and my grandfather's birthplace. This made me realise that Penang is such a small island. My parents would keep remising the shops and memories when we go about the island, they remember almost every road in Penang, but the roads in Penang have changed quite a lot, so we got lost trying to find a house. Haha.

The one thing I don't like about Penang is the lack of internet. When I came back, this Harlem Shake thing went viral. Huh, The couple of hours I experienced the Harlem Shake, I never guessed it was the Flithy Frank guy who made it viral.