Sunday, February 10, 2008
HAPPIE HAPPIE CHINESE NEW YEAR!!!!
Wishing all my friends and family good health, great wealth, and happiness and success in all you strive for! Hope everyone have a good year of the rodent!
It has been such a boring new year here in UK! 除夕 I was still slogging away on plant, and after work, there was totally no atmosphere anywhere in town at all.. felt a sudden tinge of self-pity haha.. so I went out with a few of my fellow stranded Strats to Slough Central for dinner at Nandos, a Portugese restaurant. I had a quarter chicken, marinated with extra hot peri peri sauce, together with fries and spicy rice. The chicken was really nicely marinated and grilled, but a tad too small for a big eater like me! The "extra hot" peri peri sauce was actually not really too hot, and I added more sauce to my fries! And I din drink any water til I got home! No wonder now throat so dry! After dinner we went to Tesco and I found lots of reduced items, and promptly swept them up! The cashier was even nice enough to bag the stuff for me, and better still.. charged me a pound less for my groceries! Early CNY present haha!
The 1st day of CNY was spent at home, getting some rest, renaming the pictures from my Belgium trip (u shd be able to see these soon on my picture site!), then packing my room! I've been accumulating more and more stuff on my very limited floor area for each trip I go on, and the bags of goodies were really getting in my way, so I packed them all away (into the storeroom cos there's absolutely no space in my tiny room!), munching on some of them in the meantime!
2nd day of CNY I was supposed to be off work, but blur 'ol me forgot all about it and woke up at 5am to go to work! In the end at least I spent a day working in the company of the angmohs rather than bore myself to pieces at home again! Yesterday, meanwhile, was more meaningful, cos I spent half the day helping Jack's household move house. And I realised their new house is actually rite nxt to the one we nearly rented initially (till the bastard landlord pulled out on us on the moving-in day!), and it was superbly decorated by the landlady. Really classy interior decor, and nice sturdy designer furniture to match, and a gigantic garden! I think they've found themselves a dream house!
Today is the 4th day of CNY oredi.. really quickly the days fly by.. and on the 1st Sunday of the Lunar New Year I was in London, catching all the festivities as the city with arguably the largest Chinese population in the West gathered upon Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square to paint the town red! Chinese lanterns hung idly on cables hung between lampposts in Chinatown, and stalls selling Chinese food were set up all over the place! To go with the mood of the day, all the angmohs seemed intent to squeeze into a Chinese restaurant or grab some Chinese takeaway. I noticed though that most of the people on the streets were actually either angmohs, blacks or tourists. Few local Chinese were in Chinatown on this day, evidently eager to avoid the throngs of people swarming their normal stronghold. Well those Chinese who were there were busy making a roaring business, selling paus and fried noodles and traditional Chinese toys, imported from China at low cost, and magnified countless times to rip off the unknowing angmohs. Even the food was almost 2 times their normal prices in the shops lor!
^^ Signs of Chinese presence was already felt at Oxford St
^^ The buildup to the parade!
^^ And it all starts! Giant dolls and flying fish!
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^^ 'Blind' men with their greetings
^^ And wat can a celebration be without the lion dance!
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^^ Koreans trying to cash in on the occasion selling rice cakes, trying to pass off as part of the CNY deal!
The atmosphere though was electrifying. The crowds contributed partly, and also a traditional procession, with lion and dragon dances, the ever-affable big-headed dolls, and wushu exponents going about their 'hees' and their 'haaas'. I even found a stall selling Yeos chilli sauce 2 for 1pound, and I simply couldn't resist the temptation! The day was capped by a wonderful firecrackers/fireworks display at Leicester Square. I was laughing at the farnie-looking angmohs wearing helmets and visors and ear muffs and gloves and carrying fire extinguishers, cos I thot dat was a little over-zealousness preparing for a bunch of firecrackers.. in China people just light them with a match and their bare hands, then run off to enjoy! But once the show started I realised fully why they needed such preparations. It wasn't just 1 bunch of crackers, but a whole Leicester Square full of it! And there were more fireworks hidden in the ground and dangling from the trees which added to the deafening spectacle! It went on and on forever.. lasting I think a good 5minutes.. no wonder they needed a bank to sponsor the fireworks show lah! In the end I thot it was really a superb show.. a great fusion of Chinese firecrackers and modern fireworks and pyrotechnics.. the angmohs were covering their ears and coffing away at the smoke at the end of the show, but I was totally amazed and glad I'd decided to drag myself to London on a layzee Sunday morning!
^^ Feeling the buzz
^^ Even the angmohs came dressed for the occasion
^^ More angmohs than chinese out busking in the sun
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^^ Here comes the flying fish again!
^^ Wan to buy anot?? Dun wan to buy get lost!
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^^ Trafalgar Square was painted red
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^^ And swarming with people.. 果然是人山人海！
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^^ Mobile police post disguised as a dragon
^^ Panda!
^^ The lanterns changed the look of Leicester Square
^^ For once, I feel I'm not the only person celebrating CNY here!
^^ Wily businessmen out to make a quick buck with jacked up prices
^^ Angmoh distributing flyers for Chinese dance performance in London
^^ Erm not a tripod, not bipod, but unipod!
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Now I'm back home, and back to the tmr-gotta-work mood. Ok show's over.. back to boring old Slough again. I wonder how the celebrations were back home this year.. hopefully it was much bigger than London, and hopefully everyone back home enjoyed yourselves!
senz posted at 7:15 PM
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