The Chinese New Year

If you summarise the Chinese New Year in a fruit, you'd wind up with a pineapple. A glorious, yellow-gold pineapple. If pineapple really brought gold into my household, I'd be planting more of these in my backyard. But as of now, we only have one plant that gently delivers one fruit every few months. I secretly whisper into its leaves at night and try to coax it into giving me triplets. No, acutally, I don't. But I'm sure I disturbed you a little there.



It's the new year, and considering my family does have a thing for sausages, we went on a small lap cheong spree. Unlike most people, we aren't really averse to angina. So we purchased 14 of these sweetly seasoned rods of fatty meat, and it was with distinct sadness that I had to pass half of that quantity on to my boyfriend.



Then there is the new year kitsch. Oh kitsch, lovely kitsch. What could we do without fish made of sweet glutinous rice? A sentence, again, that would not appear in any other place or time frame, save for Chinese New Year in a Chinese-ish country.



And then there was Melaka, which has preserved the pineapple tart and various other goodie-making culture better than we have. But we were stuffed from too much pre-CNY feasting. So we walked along the narrow, narrow streets where cars threaten to run you into a drain every five minutes or so. And old ladies stand at the side of the road, watching the tourists go by and thinking "oh those blithering souvenir-buying idiots again". And we bought souvenirs.



Have a glorious new year everyone, but more importantly, a blessed year to come.

Love, Sim.