新年快乐! 万事如意! 新年牛冲!

Translation: Happy (Chinese) New Year! Have many prosperous years! A successful Ox Year!
Lol my Chinese actually came in handy ^^

Anyway being a proud Australian-Chinese-Russian (just a lil,) I am profoundly patriotic to my both heritage and my roots for it represents who we were and will be. And today, being a rare occasion when the festivals of two cultures can vividly express their uniqueness are on the same day, I was fortunate enough to experience both Australia day and Chinese New Year :)

25th Jan – New Years Eve

Friends and family. That's what celebrating Chinese New Years is all about :) So I actually went to two get-togethers, one @ Annie's and the other with family @ Shark Fin Inn.
While rocking up @ Annie's at bout 10:30 (haha thankfully she was awake, though still in frantic clean up mode before everyone else got there - well "clean" as in the classic "gives up half way and ends up just shoving everything in the cupboard and hoping no one opens it" ^^) Anyway not before long when Pricilla, Charlie, Nat, Micheal Wu (haha thanx pricilla my new editor, shall pay you....eventually? haha jks - but my bad and btw sorry Micheal if u read it! ^^") Daniel, Keith n Gab (eventually withOUT the help of the directions from google maps or Annie/Michelle :P) we passed time by first attempting to play Wii and realizing that a) we all suck, well all except Keith who owned us all and actually got past level 2.... n b) not all guys have the "amazing ability to play video games" genes :P
LOL we (the girls) also made red bean dumplings that turned out quite pro-ish after cooking (and NO Daniel, you DON'T eat them raw :P haha) ^^ Though Pricilla's unique bun with the mysterious "green thing" was passed around the table at lunch until it ended up with it's maker.... Considering she (or any of us for that matter) hasn't gotten food poisoning thus far, it's now safe to say that: we can cook something beside 2 min noodles! ^^ (without burning it or the house down of course) Oh and, despite not being a purely chink tradition, Singstar was a major occupant for the rests of the time after lunch, well that and playing mahjong on the floor - which surprisingly worked out ok.... :) But srsly, I find this EXTREMELY hard 2 believe, that somehow, the guys team won singing "Barbie Girl" (though they did a fricken hilarious Ken imitation! Man, so should've recorded it....but damn Barbie's ditzy voice is annoying and hard 2 sing, if u can call is that....) But then again, the girl's team won later by rapping. Yes, you read right, we won by RAPPING LOL! Later on we just passed the mike round and battled each other while juggling b/w varying era's of music (e.g. 80's, 90's - which we'd actually known a lot of songs from, indication of age? I think not ^^") Oh, and just for the record: the girls won OVERALL, sometimes full on thrashing the guys! Hehehe :) shall post more proof here soon when Annie recovers it from her camera.
Reminder: Never get Michelle to rap EVER again....unless u wanna either cringe or crack up laughing that is :) But after scoring many high scores n sore throats, we gave our voice boxes a rest and played mahjong for the rest of the time, and learnt about 3 different ways of saying the same thing in different dialects.

That night after I got changed, my family headed to Shark Fin Inn for our annual Chinese New Year's Eve dinner with family, mostly from dad's side. Although dinner itself was relatively uneventful as I just chatted with every1 (e.g. cousins Nela, Jess etc....), one of the highlights HAS to be dragon dance! :) Being a traditional Chinese culture activity, red bags with coins in them were distributed as the dragons danced in with rhythmically beating drums and banging gongs. All together there were 3, a gold, black/red and purple, though only the gold and purple dragons came to our table. Haha every1 @ the restaraunt managed to work them quite a bit as they danced acrobatically between tables and towards anyone who offered their red bags, n of course I was no exception ^^ So just to tease the gold dragon one a lil, I stood up n waved it up high (not on a chair like some :P) This time, the guy even jumped on onto the other one's shoulders to stand steady and tall above the tables just to "eat" my red packet, unlike the other creative ones who dragged a chair and hopped on that instead....) I'd thought they might've been sick of constantly having to jump so high, but seeing the guy genuinely smiling at me as he jumped down proved that this is as much fun for them as it is for us, and indeed, it's also a major part of the festival ^^ The purple dragon came later as he saw I had a red packed left in front of me, so it decided to come up and playfully nudged me a couple of times -.-" aka hinting: give me! Lol, so who am I to deny it :P And the front seats to see them acrobatically reach the dangling cabbages high above (which has a similar pronunciation to "fortune" in Chinese) and sorta spray it all over the manager :P LOL so he ended up with cabbage all over his suit and hair ^^ But hey, it's all in the name of good luck :) Haha the manager even came round to our table and went "here you go! Gong xi fa cai!" while sprinkling some dragon shredded cabbage :P hahaha nice one ^^
Oh my cousin Nela and I also, took advantage of the Karaoke DJ person there, sang a song too :) We were gonna sing “老鼠爱大米” if we could get Uncle Tim up (mayb nxt yr) so we ended up singing "Can you feel the love tonight" as we, and the table of kids were massive fans of The Lion King ^^ Haha and just when you thought I had enough of singing for the day :P lol
The rest of the night till midnight we watched the Chinese New Year program which was AWESOME this yr! Sooo much better than last years :P Haha did any1 catch Jay Chao n Jackie Chan singing? LOL though I think Jay's choice of song was the only down side -.-" Should've chosen something else :P haha oh well, it's the thought that counts. And man the place went CRAZY when he started singing! Lol. Haha and mum also ate the "lucky" dumpling with a peanut as a substitute for money/coin @ the midnight meal :P Despite Aunty Kim's desperate attempted search and going "ok people, stop eating now, the rest is mine!" LOL

But what did I do to indulge and appreciate my Australian roots for Australia Day? Although I've been participating in mostly Chinese New Year celebrations, the fact that it's also our young countries' special day has never been far away from our conversations, hearts or minds. But one doesn't necessarily have drink beer (I'm too young anyway) or get sun burnt from the beach to have to appreciate our country, this place I've called home for all my life. Though for some reason, the Aussie anthem is still stuck in my head atm 2 ^^" (and yes ppl, I actually know the lyrics which too little people seem to do....) Although the Australian and Chinese culture might be two completely unique and rich cultures, who celebrate in quite different ways, the values which bind and make these festivals so important are actually similar (it's not all for the public holiday :P)
Our values of generosity, family, tradition, honesty, love, faith, trust, friendship, patriotism & so many more overlap as universal do they not? So even if these two cultures and countries might do seem so uniquely distinct to each other, and indeed they are in some aspects, the foundations of both are still the same - through the hard work of people and the values we all hold dear, we built these nations and will ever continue to.

So be proud of who you are and where you come from. And on that note....



alone at 10:54 PM