GONG HEY FATT CHOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Boy! Has this been a long and hard week. This is the first time in many many years that I celebrated Chinese New Year (29 Jan 2006) away from my family. The last time this happened, I was at university and that, it was entirely my own fault. Well - technically, this also is also my "fault" - choosing to come to work in London. So, I am trying to make the best of it.

I had dinner with Lisa and Sook on Chinese New Year's eve (friends are important, when one is far away from home). We went to Imperial Kitchen (I think). We ordered a Taiwanese chicken dish, prawns with salted egg yolk, some vegetables, and each of us had a different soup. I had the lobster soup (which was orange in colour - strange). Sook had a seafood soup - which was quite nice. Lisa went for the safe wonton soup. The food was quite good but the waiter kept dropping and breaking things. I told the girls that he may have been really upset because he did not get his "ang pow"(red envelopes with money in it). The really strange thing about this restaurant was, they decided not to serve dessert because they were really busy! The first time I've been to a Chinese restaurant, which did not serve dessert.... hmm...... So we went around the block and had "tau foo fah" and chestnut cake.

Chinese New Year day itself - I decided to keep to family tradition and went vegetarian for the day. I found most of the ingredients Mom used for her traditional vegetarian dish and I made myself a huge pot. It fed me for 4 meals. Because I slept in and had to cook lunch from scratch, I did not make it into the city to see what the celebrations were like. Well - there is always next year.

While everyone in KL was having a gala time (they have almost the whole week off - lucky people), I had work really hard on this project - so much so, I think I fried a few brain cells (not that I had many to start with :-(

Tina is back in KL for 3 weeks and Lisa is going back as well (I WANNA GO BACK TOOOOOOO)

Although I am not home, I made sure I called all the family and wished them a Gong Hey Fatt Choy (with a very heavy hint about ang pow - of course!) -