Chinese New Year is done and dusted with ! It was a great stretch of long holidays and that is also very good except that it started to freeze !! I dug out my doona, and its great again !

The week before the New Year just seemed to fly by and that is always great when you have a long holiday to look forward to. All too soon it was the weekend. Had a couple of great lunches, especially a sort of reunion lunch on Friday. Also went along to the Flower Market that night and that was really interesting. Something that I had only heard of in TVB, the flower market is sort of like the Royal Melbourne Show dedicated to Chinese New Year. There are snacks for sale, a lot of CNY decorations, and of course all manner of weird things. For example, there were nutcrackers for sale, there were giant blowup dolls, cow costumes, whirligigs, and so on. And of course all manners of flowers that people would use for CNY !

Saturday was a day of more mahjong games and spent Sunday mostly at home, resting with television. Went out for lunch with RoxBear and FredBear at the quayside place, where we had some brunch and then went along to the Flower Market again. The market in the daytime was different as there were more products for sale, and also a lot of younger kids. Given that Sunday was the eve of CNY as well, there were also a whole lot more people who came along for some last minute bargains ! Went home in the evening after some dessert and lazed about. While FredBear had his reunion dinner, I had some sandwiches. Had to wait as I was going to join his family in making those first prayers of the year. It was really interesting, going to temples in the middle of the night. In fact we went to three places, and I think they prayed to gods, and then to ancestors, and also to the luck people. Then off we were in search of last minute flowers again. Went to Sheung Wan and then towards the Flower Market again. Found some near the market around 1 am. All the cold air at night got me wide awake, so stayed online for a long time. Somewhere along, I got all riled up about learning another language and signed up for a 3 month online course in French. Hopefully, it goes well.

Spent Monday afternoon, dancing to hiphop on Youtube as well as learning the Tell Me dance, as later went to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at the cinema with some friends, followed by dinner at Temple Street. The movie was in my opinion, something to just watch once, and was too long, and nothing to shout about. I spent Tuesday doing all my long forgotten chores, including the cleaning, laundry, cooking, ironing and at one point it felt great to hear the pot bubbling on the stove, the washing machine rumbling, and the iron hot in my hand. Later had coffee at the Intercontinental with FredBear at TST as we were awaiting the grand fireworks to be held later that night.

We were joined by GAHil, GATra and GABish and we started making our way into the human mass gathered on the harbourside at TST. There were so many people there that it was pretty impossible to move much. We stood in the crowd for about 90 minutes before the fireworks started, and they lasted for another 25 minutes or so. So it was a VERY long stand. Have not stayed in one place to watch fireworks for a long time. Colourful, but could not really get into the mood of them, (never have) and patiently waited for it to end. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant and had some heavy topics involving marriage, work and currency movement.

Today basically got woken up by a call by FredBear at noon to go out. Considering that I had a very late night the night before, was not too pleased. Dressed up in the cold, we eventually decided to have high tea buffett at the Shangri La Hotel but that would be at 3.30. We got some snacks to munch on, and then went to Pacific Place to laze around the additional hour and a half. The food was disappointing to say the least. I have been to much better meals in Malaysia for the same price and it got me thinking about Rakuzen at one point ! Stuffed, we ambled along to Toys R Us to look at Wiis, but went home empty handed. Took a two hour nap, and am still stuffed and sneezing.

Will sleep soon. Another CNY over.

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