2. 小姑’s house ~Lunar New Year~
And yes! I’m home again on a Wednesday! Good thing I get offs now and then so I can continue to maintain this blog… Otherwise, it would be collecting dust already.
I did promise that I will blog the rest of the Lunar New Year when I get the time and I’m doing so right now, even though I have a whole day worth of pictures left untouched but that’s tomorrow’s problem. Not in the mood to edit the film now anyway.
So, as the time goes by, my memories of the Lunar New Year will start to fade away so I will do my best to entertain the few readers (hi y’all!!) with the rest of the posts. I just want to get them done soon so I can keep them as accurate as possible.
The Lunar New Year is not over yet, as of today. Today’s everyone’s birthday, apparently; the 7th day of the new year. HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVERYONE!! :)
And a side note, the visitors for today…
#01 - 31.82% from US
#02 - 22.73% from UK
#03 - 18.18% from Canada
#04 - 13.64% from Singapore
Rest of them are just a couple of percents…
LOOK SINGAPORE PEOPLE!! SHAME ON YOU!! :P
Moving on…
On the second day of the Lunar New Year, my family would normally visit my 小姑’s house (aunt’s house) and just stay there for half, if not the whole, day. Most of them would be playing cards and gambling their money away while I would normally just sit in a corner (literally sometimes) and entertain myself.
Or, take pictures…
But this year, before heading over to my aunt’s house, we went to visit my mom’s friends whom we haven’t seen for quite some time. We call one of them godma and the other one “Aunty White”, simply because when we were young, she used to wear white a lot.
Well, we visited them in a Chinese Astrology store in People’s Park Complex at Chinatown. Yes, they are into the astrology business and they were open for a short while on the second day of the new year to do some feng shui reading for a Caucasian couple who were in desperate need for divination. This is how creepy the old shopping mall that normally smells like bad Chinese herb looks like when all the shops were closed.
To make it even freakier, I made Leon and his girlfriend walk down the corridor and made this shot ghostly; almost Silent Hill-ish. Yeap. So while waiting for the Caucasians to be done with their astrology reading, we took random photos. While waiting, I heard some of the divination, saying that this year is the year of the METAL RABBIT; whatever that means…
And we finally went in!! My apologies for not taking pictures of these awesome people (godma and Aunty White) because we were too busy chatting. They were really humorous; in fact, I don’t even remember that they had such a good sense of humor! Every statement they made made me grin or laugh because it’s so funny. Anyway, I had this bandung (rose syrup) drink.
The 8 treasure box thingie filled with preserved fruits. Tell me, who actually eats these during Lunar New Year? I know very well that when people offers me these, I will kindly reject them because they look ugh! But the preserved mango was really good though!
After visiting creepy building of Chinatown, we headed over to my aunt’s house for lunch and all (the usual new year drill) and I took quite a number of photos of random things because I was THAT bored. Caught my cousin, Xander, on candid camera when he was preparing to launch an attack on my father’s butt.
While we had curry rice/noodles for lunch, Sheena’s mom had strings. She found this piece of elastic-band-looking piece of string in the noodle she ate. She was commenting that the noodle refused to break no matter how hard she chewed and when she took it out, she realized that she was chewing on string. Well, my grandma accidentally threw that in apparently.
I don’t really fancy the yellow noodles so I had rice with curry instead. The curry was YUMMY!! Made by my grandma and thank goodness there were no nasty surprises in the curry.
While I was having lunch, my other aunt was peeling the pomelo. Do you remember that I mentioned the pomelo in my previous post? Yeap, this is how you peel a pomelo and how the flesh looks like, in case you haven’t seen one before. I didn’t have any though; wasn’t in the mood for that.
When I go to my aunt’s house for visiting, I will DEFINITELY attack her new year goodies because they are so good! Especially the cookies and pineapple tarts that she makes. They are marvelous and sometimes even better than commercial ones simply because she uses the best ingredients!
Her mouth-watering pineapple tarts made from scratch! I don’t know whether she bought ready-made pineapples or made them from scratch as well but the pastry is good! She used good butter and therefore, the pastry is flavorful and really tasty. The pineapple is chewy too and unlike the normal ones sold outside, she packed each tart with a generous amount of pineapple. I crave for more even as I type this entry.
So much for food. Now let’s talk about people and everything else that cannot be placed in your mouth. This is Leon and his girlfriend, Yihui. Say hello!!
After lunch, my uncle gathered everyone on the floor and they started to play Blackjack. I think the term “gambling” seemed more appropriate though. In my family, it’s legal to gamble even though you’re like 5 - 6 years old. Odd, no? What lessons are the parents trying to teach? I myself do not gamble at all. I rather save my money for something else.
And so, while they are gambling their money away, I went around the house to look for things to photograph. Found Serene-bear-bear (this classic Pooh that my cousin named Serene, after his mom) on the study table and took this shot. The colors were manipulated in Lightroom but the sunlight was genuine. Love this photo of the lonely bear.
For once, Xander didn’t shun away from my camera. He was really sporting that day and allowed me to take lots of photos of him! It’s too bad his eyes appear quite small on photos but his smile is so cute!!
The chrysanthemum flowers were part of the decorations of the living room and they were gorgeous! I was really tempted to pluck at the petals but I didn’t because I didn’t want the younger children to follow suit and I will get the blame for dirtying the floor.
WOOOOO~ I forgot to resize this image but marvel at nature’s patterns! I was bored of staying indoors so I went out into the corridor and went shutter-happy; snapping pictures of plants and whatever nonsense I can point my camera at. Found the sunlight shining through the leaves really cool and took a close up of one of the leaves. This is enlarged digitally so yeap… But it still displays the veins which are really interesting.
Xander, being way too young to gamble (or maybe because he doesn’t know how to play the game in the first place), followed me to the corridor and snapped photos with me using his sister’s Samsung Galaxy S. Well, I’m not very fond of phones’ cameras but this camera is fun to use because of its sweeping panorama function.
Another willing shot. If you look closely at the phone, you’ll see the photo of me taking a photo of him taking a photo of me. Confusing much? :)
This was really cute!! Normally when I want to take photos at a lower angle, I will high-kneel on the ground to get the angle and that day, I wanted to take a lower shot of Xander and this is what he did; he copied my pose! Looks like I’m grooming a future photographer! :P
When I found it too warm outside, I went indoors and saw my father being obscene. The photo explains all.
My grandma did not play Blackjack (OF COURSE) because she was watching TV. If I didn’t remember wrongly, it was the show where senior citizens sing on TV. I admire their courage because… well, you get what I mean don’t you?
If you think babies and children are hard to photograph, you had not tried my grandmother. Half the time when you take pictures of her, her eyes are either closed or she looks away even though you told her to look at the camera. I had to take a lot of shots before I get this slightly more successful one of her and Rena. Maybe I should jiggle some toys in front of the camera next time to grab her attention… :P
Apparently, Rena got bored of losing money and became my model to shoot. That’s her new phone, a Sony Ericsson Xperia. I’m not a big fan of Sony Ericsson phones but this phone is neat~ I love the big screen and the color. Rena got this phone just so she can tweet non-stop and flood my inbox with her complaints. :P
HAVE YOU TRIED THESE? If you haven’t, then you probably have no childhood!! I remember having these when I was young; “ice-cream”!! Basically, it’s just a tube of cream that looks like ice-cream when you squeeze it into these mini cones. They are really sweet (which candies ain’t?), adorable but not cold… Unless you leave the tube in the fridge. Really interesting candy. Pei En is squeezing out the cream into the cone in the above shot.
Rena about to devour the cone of calories. I refused to have any because I believed I ate too much that day and didn’t really need that extra sugar.
Another 8 treasure box!! Just that this one has lesser compartments but still filled with weird things I dare not put into my mouth. I only had those chewy candies and the plums (orangey ones at the bottom of the frame) because they looked less yucky. I was too lazy to have those 瓜子 (I forgot what they are called in English… Sunflower-seed-looking-nuts-things??).
OOO!!! My grandma made another huge boo-boo that day! Well earlier in this post, I mentioned that she cooked strings with noodles? Well, around the time when I took this photo, she made coffee using 7-UP!! She mistaken 7-UP for plain water and added that into the coffee and everyone went crazy~ I had a good time laughing though. 7-UP with coffee!! That’s a first. I wonder how it tastes like but I’m not very keen on finding out.
My aunt trying to annoy Pei En, who was watching TV.
Xander’s elder brother, Xavier. He had this weird white stuff on the left eye. Probably some ointment or sort. Everyone was asking if he peeped at someone bathe and that’s why he needs to put ointment on his eyes. Did your parents say that to you to discourage you from peeping at people?
Aik Hin fell asleep, just like I did when I was too bored.
But being bored is actually good because you will look at things that you never noticed before and take pictures of it. The sunlight was shining through the patterned glass window and I took a picture of it to capture the texture and the patterns. Applied a preset in Lightroom and ta da~ Got this shot!!
The final shot of the day. Rena sat on the floor and the light was hitting her really nicely so I took this shot. Well, it seems like I’m giving reasons for why I take photos but actually, sometimes I just feel inspired so I want to take a photo. Sometimes, I’m just too bored. That day, I was really bored out of my skull so might as well use that energy to do something productive. Anyway, Rena looks good in this photo, less the pimple on her face though.
All in all, the second day was a bore because I did nothing but eat, sleep, take photos and repeat. Nothing much to it.
Stay tuned for Day 3 (hopefully I will finish Day 3 by tomorrow) to find out what else I did. It will be really beautiful, I promise~ :D
