Thursday, February 7, 2008

Chinese New Year Day! Rat Year!

So rapidly time has passed. It is this time of year once again. Birds are chirping - Spring is here. Although in Penang we only gets 2 seasons, dry and rainy - but spring is in the air for Chinese. China calls it spring festival 春节. This is Ethan's third Chinese New Year.

Furthermore this is the year of the Rat. For daddy, it signifies a good year for his division. Daddy had been working for nearly 7 years in a division that develop optical mouse. That's how Ethan gets mouse to torture and run stringent qualification test with. Daddy says that Rat year should be a auspicious year for mouse business! Since daddy married a rat - mummy, this year should be double luck for our family.

Early in the morning, we traveled back to Guar Chempedak grandma's place. Mummy had prepared an abundant of red packet "Ang Pow" to distribute to visiting relatives. Of course, Ethan is also anticipated to get "Ang Pow" as well.

Seems like CNY is a time for eating, and eating and further eating. Obviously Ethan did not waste any time and started to get goodies from Grandma to eat. For example he is munching on the beetroot crackers shown below:



Ah Wen sister came to visit and Ethan took some photos with her. Initially those 2 kids stood so further apart from each other. Ethan was wearing his new red shirt and Ah Wen sister also dressed in red cheongsam.


Mummy had to pair them together by curling sister's hand around Ethan's neck.


Food still in hand, Ethan had a cute grin on his face.

More photos taken at grandpa's garden while waiting for the arrival of the lion dance.


Finally the lion dance arrived at grandpa's house. Grandma and mummy initially did not allow Ethan to be near to the lion. They were afraid that the lion would give Ethan a scare. Therefore, they watched from a far with Ethan.

This is the first time that Ethan had seen a lion dance. However, Ethan seems to have enjoyed it and he was not at all afraid. After the lion dance left and went to another house, Ethan ran out to chase after it. Daddy had to accompanied him to walk over to the neighbor to watch.


This time at the neighbor's house, Ethan watched the lion dance close up. After the lion dance, mummy positioned Ethan in front of grandma's big bucket of oranges to take photos. Ethan used this opportunity to throw some oranges out of the big bucket. Notice that this is just the first day of new year and not the 15th. The tradition of throwing oranges would not happen until 15 days later during Chap Goh Meh.

Mummy took this great "National Geographic" quality shot below with the orange frozen in mid air. This is perhaps a one in a million chance shot. Daddy likes it very much!


Steamboat, there is always steamboat during CNY lunch or dinner or both. Here we had steamboat lunch since we just arrived at grandpa's house this morning. Again Ethan got the chance to enjoy eating more food.


He has not stop eating since arrived here, except for a moment of diversion watching the lion dance. Here is Ethan eating his special handmade wanton.


Putting on my hair band so that my hair does not interfere with my food. After all those eating, a good exercise to get rid of extra calories.

Riding on daddy is also a kind of exercise. Ethan is so hentai that he pushes daddy's head down so that daddy could not lift his head. You can observe clearly this behavior in the video shots below:



Ethan enjoyed himself thoroughly today.

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