Festivities?

I'm really really thankful for family.

Lunar New Year celebrations are technically not over yet. I don't know if this year LNY was a wealth of more discoveries, or I was merely too young to start asking questions before.

As per my previous post, I've become more intrigued by Chinese culture. There seems to be this fine line between religion and culture that people so often blur - causing a big gaping hole in what is tradition. I remember listening to a sermon just last month where the preacher briefly mentioned how things are more or less 'form over function when they really should be function over form' in today's society. Too many times the 'form' has become the major focus, causing lost sight to the 'function' and so resulting in everything being labelled 'a religious thing' because no one knows better. Society creates rules and parameters, many times putting precedence on how things are carried out rather than what things are really for. I don't know if I am making sense. Lol.

I discovered this year that yee sang festivities must all be four-word phrases (fai di kit fun doesn't count). I also discovered that the 8th day is really when the hokkiens celebrate the LNY. Cantonese culture says that elder siblings still give hongbaos to married younger siblings, and married couples still give hongbaos separately. This was technically something I discovered last year, but bubur chacha is eaten on the 15th day of the LNY.

It was a relatively quiet LNY, seeing as this year was better planned as to when the relatives converged on the house since we were hosting Ah Kong. I think one of the things I was really thrilled about this time around was that we got to see Mum's side of the family too and have a nice dinner with them.

We're closer to Mum's side of the extended family than Dad's, given how spread out the latter is and also the language barrier. I think it's slightly better now that I'm a little more confident with mandarin, but I still feel like I lost out a lot on the cultural side because of well...many circumstances. It's not an entirely hopeless situation though. I'm learning. I'm asking questions. I'm still brushing up on my mandarin and cantonese (thank goodness Mum's side speaks cantonese and my aunts and PorPor are more than happy to be amused by my attempts and laugh them off with me, then teach me the right words or inflections).

In other news, after eight years of knowing Aiyo and J, they're finally tying the knot! Social validation will happen come June. I'm thrilled and really really looking forward to mini Aiyos and Js running around!