Latest TODAY column: How sweet it is...
Excerpt:
DURING Chinese New Year, most shops are closed, especially coffee shops and restaurants.
Some stay open, but charge higher prices, take it or leave it (roti prata: usual price 50 cents, CNY price 60 cents to $1).
This means that if you did not plan ahead, and stock up on food, or make appointments to visit friends and relatives who are opening their homes (and providing meals), you are pretty much stuck.
The only places that seem to be open are Malay/Indian-run coffee shops and fast food outlets. In fact, we had a pizza dinner ourselves on the first day of Chinese New Year.
It was fun, but when you have to eat the soggy leftover slices of a large Hawaiian Supreme for breakfast on the second day of the New Year as well, it loses a little of its novelty.
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Full column:
How sweet it is...
During Chinese New Year, most shops are closed, especially coffee shops and restaurants. Either that, or some remain open, but charge higher prices, take it or leave it (roti prata, usual price $0.50, CNY price $0.60 to $1.00).
This means that if you did not plan ahead, and stock up on food, or make appointments to visit friends and relatives who are opening their homes (and providing meals), you are pretty much stuck.
The only places that seem to be open are Malay/Indian-run coffee shops, and fast food outlets. In fact, we had a pizza dinner ourselves, on the first day of Chinese New Year. It was fun, but when you have to eat the soggy leftover slices of a large Hawaiian Supreme for breakfast on the second day of the New Year as well, it loses a little of its novelty.
That is why we were very happy when my mom brought lunch over. One good thing about having a huge reunion dinner is the huge high-end leftovers. I mean, there is only this much prawn, abalone, scallop and chicken an extended family like ours can consume in one night. That does not stop my mother from cooking all of it at one go, of course. But no one is complaining.
So lunch for the second day was fried rice. Not just any old fried rice, but loaded with clams, scallops, prawns and all manner of good stuff, left over from New Year’s Eve. Washed down with soup made with crab and chicken (boiled forever and a day), also a legacy of the reunion dinner bash.
New Year is also a time for grandparents to do their sacred duty of stuffing the grandkids with all manner of contraband. From love letters to sweets to pineapple tarts. My 15-month-old baby boy is now a bak kwa addict. Not good.
All those months of hard work meticulously controlling their diet and access to junk food, destroyed in one festive day by loving grandparents.
Oh, the grandparents would come up with some kind of ancient Chinese excuse, quoting some obscure saying, like “sweets are a symbol of good luck during Chinese New Year, must eat must eat.” This is followed by your two children having their mouths stuffed with a gumdrop each, which promptly explodes with sugary energy in their little fragile bodies, sending them darting all over grandma’s house like pocket tornados.
In the end, even grandma had to lie down on the sofa, exhausted from chasing after two kids who have missed their afternoon naps, powered by adrenaline and sugar.
And with so much food and so many goodies just lying around the house, it is inevitable that the children also start helping themselves. My home has become some kind of CNY Self-service Snack Kiosk for my kids.
There are drinks on the coffee table, a tray of sweets on the dining table, and mandarin oranges on the living room table… snack heaven for kids. Normally, the house is a barren wasteland as far as snacks were concerned, for we keep a fairly snack-free household.
It was a challenge keeping the kids from climbing unto tables to get at the goodies, which were as much fun to play with as they are to eat. I have many packets of squeezed Taiwanese sweet meats if you don’t mind some bruises and crumpled wrapping.
On the second day of New Year, as I was watching Sesame Street with both the kids in the morning, I noticed my autistic firstborn, Faith, chewing on something and wincing like she was eating something bitter.
“What’s in your mouth, girl?” I asked, knowing that I did not give her anything to eat, and that she had already finished breakfast.
I reached out and dug my fingers into her mouth filled with… orange peel.
And as I dug out the pieces of peel, laughing, I noticed that one of the mandarin oranges on the table had a big chunk of skin bitten off it.
I picked that poor orange up, and peeled the skin off, much to the excitement and delight of my almost four-year-old daughter, who was already bouncing up and down in anticipation of her favourite fruit. Reminds me of the time she ate a stolen banana unpeeled.
Aside from watching both sets of junk-food-peddling grandparents like a hawk, I also spent a little time online, reading about how others spent their CNY.
One friend brought his wife and baby daughter to the Causeway, on the way to see his parents in Malaysia, only to realize that his passport was still with the Japanese embassy awaiting a visa application for a business trip. They had to make a U-turn home.
But his parents would not let a small matter like the-father-no-passport, hamper their plans. Relatives from all over Malaysia, from Kelantan to KL, had gathered in JB to see his little baby girl. So in the end, they braved Causeway jams to get the girl and her mother (necessary to provide breast milk and diaper support) to JB. Now that’s dedication for you.
Chinese New Year is a time to watch silly shows like Jet Li’s Black Mask (badly) dubbed in English, sleazy Asian beauty pageants where an audience made up of mainly men ogle at bikini-clad contestants, and repeats of CNY variety shows.
It is also the time to great time to bond with family, to eat, drink and lose Ang Pow money in blackjack, and to put the backlog of 500 photos into albums.
Have a blessed New Year, and remember the Chinese saying, “good luck comes to those who stuff their grandkids silly with snacks and soft drinks.”
Or something like that.
mr brown is the accidental author of a popular website that has been documenting the dysfunctional side of Singapore life since 1997. He is thinking of putting all the sugar-laden kids in one locked bedroom next year, to keep the adults sane and reduce property damage.
