welcoming the year of the snake

happy chinese new year. the year of the water snake beckons and hopefully it will be a good year to everyone. if you listen to zodiac predictions, it ain't gonna be a good one for me, a snake.  yesh, you can go ahead and guess my age.
and they might be true from the amount of money i have lost on the playing table in the game of 'chi kam'. lol.  i have only won once from the many times the cards were spread on the table. how pathetic.
i really couldn't take it anymore and asked to be excused.

the reunion dinner was already over and i bet everyone is with their family and friends now.

we had 8 dishes on the table. one was bought from restaurant fu man, pun chooi. the rest were cooked by aunt and mom. preparation started since yesterday and the meal was over in less than an hour.

enlarge the picture if you want to see what we had. i just realised that most of the dishes were brown in colour when making the collage. there were quite many meat dishes as well. my favourite? the fish of course. the soup was good too.

there is no welcoming the god of prosperity at midnight nor any special prayer to welcome the year of the snake. we will have one prayer tomorrow, for grandma's death anniversary and there is no need to even be dressed in the customary new clothes.
our house is void of any red chinese new year decoration as well and the adults are not going to give us any red packets. there goes a few hundreds. well, the tradition is the king of the day.

anyway, there still are things i have to do just to make myself more psyched up to welcome the new year. it just doesn't seem right not to join in all the festivities.

the car has to be cleaned no matter what and thank god, there is the service of the auto car cleaner in town. for a meagre price of rm5, i got the car washed. of course, at that price, no vacuuming is included. well, at least the car is clean now....see the picture? it is actually gleaming hahahaha.....
and i didn't even have to drive the car to the car wash. i had my brother and cousin to do that for me.
come to think of it, i still haven't paid him. hahahhaa.

and of course my hello kitty cushions needed some cleaning too. i has been ages since i last cleaned them. so the new year gives me a motivation to wash them.

i also had a pre-cny workout yesterday upon the insistence of my brother who couldn't find anyone to accompany him to the gym in proton city's sports complex. he sponsored my trip to the gym of course, rm 4 was the price.

the view from the gym was really peaceful. it was quite a big gym room but unfortunately the equipment there was nothing to shout about. they are quite limited only. what a waste of space.
i only went on the treadmill and ran for 40 minutes. it was a good sweating session.

i had mentioned earlier that there won't be any celebration come tomorrow, but it still won't feel right without any new clothes in the wardrobe. i only had 2 new tee shirts which i bought last year and haven't worn. i will have nothing new to wear when i go back to work once the week's holiday is over.
hence i insisted on going to ipoh when the opportunity rose with the hope of buying at least a set of new clothes for work.

well, i did get one skirt and a shirt. phew! and the set of towels above? haha...birthday present for this year. it is something which i have always wanted. and with a bit of whining, i did get it. kakakakkaa....so new towels for the new year!!!!

and we went for a little drink after shopping too. the place is called sky lounge in ipoh. it is on the 7th floor of a hotel which name i had forgotten. it is open air and a really good place for drinking. however, the drinks were nothing to shout about. i ordered a jack daniels...it has been ages since i had one.

dinner that night was japanese but not at sky lounge.

it was at a restaurant called ninja jones at de garden, opposite kinta city. the food was so-so. the waiter was really scary with his ninja look complete with half-covered face. don't think i will ever go back since ipoh do have some other really good japanese restaurants.

since it is the cny week, i also had the opportunity to meet with some ex-kids who came back from singapore. they purposely came to look for me and brought me some stuff too.

love them!!!! imagine going to mcdonalds and buying their happy meal every week for a month just to get me these dolls. and that big box of chocolates! i will be fat!

it will be a week of meeting friends and relatives. gosh, i will be dreading those questions related to my single status for sure. well, i am just sick of those questions more than dreading them i think.
whatever will be, will be.
can't wait to sample cny goodies and having some banters with my friends.

so have a good year everyone despite what the zodiac predictions say. live a good life and enjoy to the fullest every day that you have.