Chinese New Year 2020

Koong Hei Fatt Choy to all my Chinese readers who are celebrating Chinese New Year!

Sorry for the lack of update as I was back in my beautiful hometown of Ipoh for 5 days to celebrate the Lunar New Year.  The days seem to pass so swiftly when you're with all your favorite people and having loads of fun with them. Today is the 7th day of CNY and the CNY atmosphere seems to have dissipated the moment we returned to KL on the 3rd day of CNY and instead replaced with another kind of vibe. 

Everyone's talking about Coronavirus since the start of the CNY.  The topic of discussion during our CNY dinner on the 3rd day of CNY with the Yaps was centered on the novel Coronavirus / Wuhan Virus.  As we have relatives who are frequent travelers, everyone couldn't help but to talk about the latest epidemic that has swept like wild forest fires to many parts of the world, including our country. As of the date of this post, there are 7 confirmed cases in Malaysia.


The mil left for Chiang Mai early yesterday morning for a holiday with sil #2 from Hong Kong. I've been helping her get ready for this trip since two weeks ago with multiple trips to the pharmacies and clinic. I called most of the hospitals in the Klang Valley to ask if there's stock for the flu shot but all the hospitals and clinics in Malaysia have run out of stock! SIL #2 from Hong Kong also asked us to help her buy cartons of face masks but most pharmacies in Ipoh and Klang Valley have run out of stock too.  Same goes for hand sanitizer. Fortunately we managed to get a box of N95 face mask from a pharmacy in Ipoh (last box) for the mil to pass to SIL from Hong Kong when they meet in Chiang Mai.  Two days ago the mil made a trip to a warehouse in Klang to get a few cartons of face masks for SIL #2.  A family friend managed to help us pre-order a few cartons of this precious commodity!




One carton contains 1000 pieces (50 pieces x 20 boxes)

Thousands of pieces of face masks went with the mil and another family friend to Thailand yesterday for the Hong Kongers who are in desperate need of them.

OK, back to my main topic - Chinese New Year 2020!

Our trip back to Ipoh on the eve of the eve of CNY went pretty smooth, except for the traffic congestion in Selayang. It took 3 hours to reach Ipoh (with one toilet stop) instead of the usual 1 hour 40 minutes.  The returning trip on the 3rd day of CNY only took 2 hours as we left Ipoh at 7:30 a.m.

Doting indulgent daddy got the girls Baskin-Robbins ice cream at the Tapah R&R and they ate it in his car, something that I prohibit the girls from doing in my car 😐


The gourmand hubs just had to get his fix of Hakka noodles on the eve of CNY. We had this a couple of hours before our reunion lunch with the Yaps at Mun Choong Restaurant.  CNY is all about food, eh?



Cass helped her dad to wash car to earn some pocket money to buy more novels.

Our reunion lunch at Mun Choong Restaurant:







And this is our reunion dinner at my parents':



A huge spread of CNY dishes, all lovingly cooked by my 77-year old papa who loves cooking.


This year hubs bought a big fat capon / castrated chicken (RM210 for the capon) from KL to bring back to Ipoh for the reunion dinner. The capon weighed 3.5kg and has firm and tasty meat.  Some chicken lovers even eat the capon skin as it tastes better than regular chicken skin but chicken skin is a big NO NO for me.   A capon is a cockerel that has been castrated to improve the quality and taste of its flesh.



Papa started to prep the 'yeong ho si' (stuffed dried oysters with fish meat) a few days before the reunion dinner. It's a Hakka dish that my late paternal grandmother would cook every CNY - tedious to prep as it involves many steps. Thanks papa for cooking my favorite dish 💗


The cousins played with firecrackers after dinner.  When we were kids, my papa never failed to buy firecrackers for my brothers and me to play every CNY and that was the best part of CNY for us, besides the Fanta Grape and Fanta Strawberry soda 😍


To be continued...

Home Cooked Chinese New Year Dishes By Papa

My papa and mum baked almost 10 types of cookies for Chinese New Year this year.  On the eve of CNY, papa cooked a feast for the reunion dinner. My older brother and his family from Singapore traveled back to Ipoh, so did my younger brother from KL.  We only joined them on the first day of CNY.  My older brother even purchased a new MPV that could fit in the entire family of six just on time for this trip ~ they welcomed twin babies late last year.

On the third day of CNY, papa cooked all the CNY dishes that he cooked on the eve again, just for our  family as we had missed them on the eve.  My late maternal and paternal grandmas used to cook these dishes and it's a passed down tradition to cook them during CNY.



Clockwise from top: Braised stuffed dried oysters with black moss (Ho See Fatt Choy), waxed meat and cured sausages,  sauteed leek with roast pork, lotus root and pork ribs from the soup, abalone braised with black moss (Pau Yue Fatt Choy), braised stuffed mushrooms with black moss (Toong Koo Fatt Choy), steamed cod fish, sauteed lettuce  and steamed chicken in the center.  Many of the CNY dishes have black moss (fatt choy) in them as the word 'fatt choy' in Cantonese means PROSPER, which is an extremely auspicious word, especially during CNY.










Are you droooooling already? I am, looking at these pix 😆

It will be another one year before we get to dig into these CNY dishes again and I am already starting to miss them now 😋💗

Chinese New Year 2018

Besides visiting relatives and friends, this is how Cass spent her time in Ipoh on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd day of CNY.  Her two sisters were as usual hooked to their phones 😡

Continued with her Hello Kitty cross stitch project and of course popping on granny's homemade cookies into her mouth throughout the day.  Ju, my bff in Singapore gave this lovely gift to Cass for Christmas when we met up in Singapore in December last year.



Cass only works on this cross stitch project whenever she has extra time on hand, i.e. when school and tuition homework is completed, piano practised and my BM homework for her is done.  She hardly has time on school days, which means that she can only work on this project during school holidays.

With the very little time that she had, she managed to complete only one Hello Kitty since she started the project in late Dec 2017:



I'm amazed with the patience and focus that Cass has with cross stitching, just like how she could spend hours on end solving boxes after boxes of jigsaw puzzle when she was just 3 years old.

Below: our reunion dinner at Kok Thai Restaurant on the first day of CNY.

The stroller that Alycia is lugging here once belonged to her.  It's a gift to Alycia 15 years ago from Marene 'kham mou' (my  brother's wife) from Singapore.  Who would have thought that 15 years on,  Alycia would be lugging this very stroller for her kham mou's babies.  In fact, the twinnies are now using the playpen and baby cot that Alycia once used whenever we went back in Ipoh when she was a baby.





A trip to Ipoh will always involve a trip to Kinta City, a shopping mall located just a couple of minutes away from my parents.  The girls just have to drown themselves with books at Popular Book Store.



A trip to Ipoh will never be complete for Cass if she doesn't get to go to the arcade at Kinta Cinty to try her hands on the claw machines, bouncy ball machine and crystal machine.

Cass gasped in disbelief when she saw a woman with a big bag of plush toys that she won from the claw machine. How did this lady do it?!  Chances of clawing out a plush toy successfully are 1 in 10, perhaps even 1 in 20.  And this lady had about 4 or 5 toys inside the bag. I think it was pure fluke at that moment. When Cass and I stood behind her to watch how she did it, she didn't succeed anymore after several tries.  And nope,  I didn't give Cass any money to play. She knows it very well that one must be a million times lucky to 'hit the jackpot'.






But I think Cass was very lucky coz when she went into the arcade at the kids' department of Aeon, we met a woman who was extremely amiable, warm and generous who she gave Cass a giant 'crystal'.   The woman in her late 40s and her husband were accompanying their 15-year old daughter.  The woman must have spent about RM50 on tokens for her daughter to play on just one game machine ~ which dispenses colorful fake bling bling crystals. The more tokens you slot in, the more chances of getting a giant crystal.  Cass and I stood there watching the girl play at the machine with her parents cheering her on and jumping in excitement each time the machine dispensed 'crystals'.  The sound of the crystals dropping out of the machine, like the sound of gold bars dropping out is enough to excite and tempt you to slot in a few more tokens to win more crystals.  The girl and her mother would then gleefully collect the dropping crystals as if they were collecting real gold and store them in a plastic bag.  From time to time, the woman would chat with me while commenting "I spent more than RM20 just on plastic for my daughter", followed by a cheerful guffaw. She must have been in a real good mood that day.   After a good 20 minutes or so with her daughter filling up a huge bag full of fake crystals, the woman walked towards me with two gigantic crystals in her hand (one is green and one purple) and asked Cass to choose one.  Cass was flabbergasted and said 'NO'.  The woman was persistent and persuaded Cass to choose one. Seeing how sincere the woman was,  I chose the purple one on Cass' behalf and thanked the woman profusely before we parted ways and wished each other "koong hei fatt choy" 😆

The giant purple fake crystal is now on my table top.  It reminds me of one woman's generosity, kindness and sincerity and how much joy the cheap crystal has brought to Cass. One day, I will pay it forward and pass the kindness to another kid, perhaps in an arcade.

Chinese New Year 2018 ~ Day 2 (17 February 2018)

We got up early to go to the Yaps' ancestral home to have reunion brunch.  This is the first time our family had reunion brunch on the second day of CNY at the 4-decade old refurbished ancestral home in Ipoh.   The previous ancestral house was a huge mansion at Thompson Road, opposite the Ipoh Turf Club. The mansion was sold a few years back and the piece of land is now developed into a new housing estate.  Our first day of CNY for the past few years had been in KL with the mil and we would then travel back to Ipoh on day 2 but this year she's still in Hong Kong.





Feast fit for a king, dished up by the hubs' aunts who are all skillful cooks and bakers in their own rights:



Clockwise from top: sauteed mixed vegetables, braised Hakka pork, seared fresh scallops, pig intestines pepper soup, acar, steamed waxed meat with arrowroot, braised Hakka pork and steamed fish.  The star dish at the center of the table is Phoon Choy.

I guess I should count on my blessings that I needn't have to put on my apron to dish up a few mean Hakka dishes for the relatives during CNY. So thankful that I never have to cook anything on CNY except to help around.


And this year we had a big pot of delightful 'Phoon Choy' (Prosperity Abalone Treasure Pot) from Tuck Kee Restaurant costing a whopping RM500++


Getting ready to "Loh Sang"



The girls helping to babysit baby Raeanne.

The next time we meet the twins again could be in another half a year's time or maybe even longer. It's such a hassle to travel from Singapore to Ipoh (or even to KL) with twin babies. When we meet the tweenies again, I guess they would have already learnt to crawl or even walk. Can't wait to meet them again.

Li Chun, 4 Feburary 2018

Sunday, 4 February 2018 is Li Chun day. Li Chun marks the beginning of spring and is the first of the 24 solar terms according to the Chinese lunar calendar. This year, it falls on Feb 4.

Many Chinese people would celebrate the beginning of Li Chun by worshipping and giving offerings to the gods and performing ceremonies for a prosperous new year. That practice has changed considerably over the past few years. The trend of depositing and withdrawing money on this auspicious day now seems to be the norm, with many queueing up at banks and cash deposit machines to conduct their transactions believing it can help grow their wealth and ensure good luck in the new year. The practice is that people would either withdraw or deposit their cash at a specific time, based on the zodiac year they were born.

We never observe any of the practices done on Li Chun day.  This year's Li Chun, as with previous years, my Facebook news feed was filled with friends posting photos of their egg balancing acts.  And my curiosity got the better of me. I was eager to try the egg balancing act too to see if it my egg can really stand on the tip on this day.

Many people believe that on Li Chun day, eggs can be placed to stand vertically easier than on any other day.  People believe that if your egg(s) can stand vertically on Li Chun day, it symbolizes a good year ahead for you. For me, I take it with a pinch of salt, albeit I do wish that I'll have a fantastic and smooth sailing year all year long 😊. Some say that egg standing on Li Chun day is just a myth and if you have the time and patience to try, an egg can be put to stand on its tip on any other day.

So, just for the fun of it, Cass, Alycia and I tried balancing eggs on our Li Chun Sunday.  It was pretty easy for me to get the eggs to stand. It took me around 10-15 minutes each time to get an egg to stand. And just for experimenting how long the egg could stand, we left the eggs on the floor for over an hour and it was still standing despite it being very windy on that day.  I took away the eggs to mop the floor later and Cass was enraged!  She wanted the eggs to remain on the floor just to see how long they can stand. 😆

My eggs stood on the tip on the kitchen top and kitchen floor:


After only 5 minutes of  attempting, Alycia gave up when her egg didn't stand.  She had to practise singing for her Drama Club assignment and spent the entire evening and night working on her voice.




Cass was very persistent and patient. She tried umpteen times and finally at around 6pm, she rejoiced when her egg stood on the its tip!  This girl had proven that she's got tons of patience when at age 3, she could spend hours on end solving boxes after boxes of jigsaw puzzles, with full concentration.




Here's to a year  filled with lots of good luck, good wealth and good health to me and everyone at home and I certainly wish that this year will be a fabulous one for you too! 🙏

Happy counting down to Chinese New Year!

Second Day of CNY 2017

On the second day of CNY, we took the 8:30 a.m. ETS train from KL Sentral to Ipoh.   We had to be in Ipoh for the Yong family reunion lunch.

I jumped out from bed at 5 a.m. despite only going to bed way past midnight the night before. After doing the laundry, I woke the girls up and hollered repeatedly to them to get ready before I called Uber for two cars to bring us to the train station.

We reached KL Sentral at 8:10 a.m.  Hubs brought us to McDonalds to have a quick bite while he went to Burger King to get some takeaway burgers. Holidays are the only time when the girls get to indulge in junk food.




In the train, Cass had another round of breakfast... with me putting the brake on her appetite before she stuffed  more nuggets into her mouth!





On the fourth day of CNY, we took the 9 a.m. train from Ipoh back to KL.  On arrival, someone requested for Burger King again! 😰😳  That's it, the girls had used up their fast food quota and they will have to wait for at least another half a year before they get to eat fast food again. 😈





Below - a picture taken with my favorite cuzzie, Suzan, her daughter, my niece Raelyne and my 3 angels. This was taken at our reunion lunch in Ipoh on the second day of CNY.

Our 2016 Christmas & Boxing Day

Our Christmas 2016 morning was spent worshipping in the church.




After church, we spent our afternoon indulging in sumptuous Japanese food at Lot 10's Isetan Japan Store. There was a whole jing bang of us - my parents, my younger brother Roy, my older brother Ray and his family, the mil, hubs and our 3 girls.

After lunch and tea, everyone had a rest at home before the onslaught of Christmas dinner at the hubs' aunt's house. While everyone rested at home, I quickly did a quick clean-up of the house as our part-time helper was on leave for several days.

As with previous years, our Christmas dinner has always been pretty traditional with such retro treats as roast turkey with stuffing, cold ham, grilled sausage with bacon wrap, roast lamb leg, Christmas pies, Christmas pudding, Panettone bread, an assortment of salads, spaghetti, pasta and fruits.






















Our yearly Christmas dinner always ends with  gift exchange and unwrapping of gifts towards midnight along with lots of camwhoring 😄

Below - my mum with her 2 youngest grand-daughters - Cass and Raelyne.




On Boxing Day, we had desserts of ice-cream and waffles at Inside Scoope. Below is a charcoal waffle 'injected' with salted duck's egg atop, GLORIOUS!  This must be the latest food trend that cafes have caught on. It sits well on all spectrum - sweet, savory, crispy and cold. It's so very scrumptious!







My baby girl and me 😍 and this little girl with an appetite bigger than her tummy was reluctant to share her 2 big scoops of ice-creams with me 😡

Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning (24 & 25 December 2015)

Christmas Eve - 24 Dec 2015

We had a 3-in-1 joyous celebration at the hubby's uncle's house last night. It was to celebrate his uncle and aunt's wedding anniversary, the aunt's birthday and Christmas.

The hubby was in charged of the food and here's what he and his team dished out for the party...

Below - smoked salmon with salad.





Below - delectable chicken chop and mashed potato.




Below - BBQ succulent prawns and tomato in skewers.





Below - Roast whole lamb, steak, scallops and mussels.




Below - Juicy BBQ scallops and mussels





Below - fried rice, mixed vegetables with Portobello, quiche and pasta.





Below - assortment of fresh fruits and Nyonya kuih.



Below - Our girls with their 'aunt' Mel (hubby's cousin) and new friend, Michael from Christchurch.





Our girls started to warm up with their new friends from Christchurch during a game of cards. They will join us in our Christmas dinner tonight and the girls can't wait to continue their card game with them tonight.  Playing games is one of  the best ways to break the ice and loosen up to new found friends.






Our girls with their beautiful 'aunt' Mel and Michael from Christchurch.  Michael is a very bubbly, sociable and cute little guy from Christchurch. He's the same age as Cass and is the live wire at the party who can play the piano like a pro at just 7 years old.





In case you missed out on my earlier posts, the hubby runs a catering company. If you need a caterer for your company and private functions, do give him a tinkle at 019 266 4297 (Catermate / Alan) :)



Christmas morning - 25 December 2015

We followed the hubby's aunts, uncle and cousins to the church for the 9am service.  I thought we could not make it on time as we only went to bed at 1:30am this morning.  But I was jolted from my beauty sleep up at 6am coz I had a darn painful leg cramp! It's been a long long time since I last had a leg cramp.  Fish! But good thing, coz if it wasn't because of the leg cramp, I think I would have continued with my dream and slept in till 7ish am and wouldn't have made it on time for the 9am service.





There was a huge turnout at the church. After service, we queued up to get pau, courtesy from the church. As you can see from the pix below, the church compound was a sea of church-goers.





After church, we had breakfast at one of the coffee shops at Jln Imbi.

Tonight there will be another round of feasting. This time, there will be traditional Christmas dinner goodies, featuring stuffed turkey, stuffed ham, bacon, pumpkin soup, et al.

Here's wishing you a very merry blessed Christmas :)