My CNY

Fancy red in colour ornaments hung across the street, people busy rampaging malls for last minute shopping and the honking of cars at every corner of the road depicts this annual festive season call Chinese New Year (CNY).

I'm not particularly a CNY enthusiast for several reasons, some of which I'd rather keep to myself.
Having said that, I do try to appreciate it.
This year, I decided to take an extra effort to do so -
I decided to bring my little KodakEasyShare camera, not the best in the world but it works, to share a glimpse of what my CNY is like.

For starters, my whole family hail from the historical town of Malacca... except me, I'm the only odd one who got sesat in KL, born and bred in KL.
So every year, I'll balik to my parents punya kampung in Malacca.
My dad... Yes, this dude down here...

He's a baba - Peranakan.
Yet, I don't look one bit mixed blood.
Cis.
Con-job betui.
Turned out to be a typical sepet-eyed chinese pulak.
Anyway, I always find myself struggling coping with language diversity during CNY.
On one extreme, my dad's side will be speaking Malay to each other, while on the other extreme, my mum's side, they pulak will be conversing to me in either Mandarin or Hokkien.
Tongue literally tied wei.
It intrigues me though to observe how diverse my relatives are from both ends.

When I was younger, we used to have reunion dinner with my paternal relatives.
Now that most of them are scattered everywhere else, we don't really have reunion dinner.
So, reunion dinner for the pass 3 years was more of an immediate family affair thing, which suits me better. Never really fancied extended-family reunion dinner.

On the first day of CNY, just like every other Chinese, it's the yearly visitation ritual.
A ritual where I prepare my CNY "speech".

Uncle A: So what you doing now?
Me: Oh, just graduated. Now studying lor...
Uncle A: Wah, graduaated oledi ar... So big d... Working as what now?
Me: Yalor, I very big d. Working as Research officer in USM.
I research and write articles on a given topic.
Uncle A: Why never bring your girlfriend for CNY?
Me: Aiya, no girlfriend how to bring. Maybe next year lar uncle...

Yup, it's essential to prepare speech for CNY.
Must always be ready.

This is my maternal relatives. Half the time I don't really know what they're blabbering about but just laugh along when they laugh lar. Nice people though =)

There's a family "tradition" that we do every year when we're in Malacca.
Besides visiting and all, Malacca is also a heaven for sumptious food and they say all the best ones are the roadside punya kedai.
True enough, that's where we go to every year.

This stall sells mee rebus.
Memang sedap.
This guy who's selling is the third generation, taking up what his great-grandfather made famous in the streets of Banda Hilir and Ujong Pasir.
My mom actually remembers his great-grandfater selling mee rebus in her neighbourhood when she was younger.

If you're in Malacca, you ought to stop by this stall.
It's just opposite the Portuguese settlement in Ujong Pasir

And this....

... is my late grandfather's (maternal) house.
The few things I do enjoy about going back to Malacca is the chance of visiting this very typical Malacca Chinese wooden house.
My mum grew up in this house and stepping into this place, it gave me eyes of what my mum's life was like when she my age.

What's even cooler is this house has a well! Just that it's square instead of the fairy-tale-like round shaped well... But still...

It's been there since my mum was a kid.
It's OLD but still ada air.

What made this year's CNY interesting was the opportunity to catch up with my Aussie cousin and his wife in Malacca. They were up in Malaysia for holiday.
When I was in Aussie for two months back in my primary school days, this cousin of mine used to bring me around theme parks and all.
Since then, I labelled him the "cool cousin" and it was great catching up with him again, what more with his wife.

Our last stop before we balik KL was for another session of satisfying our taste buds.
My dad loves this particular shop in Tengkera that sells Duck noodles.
It's really GOOD.
Just for satisfactino sake, we stopped by and whacked puas-puas before taking off.

Duck Noodles.

So that's basically how my annual Chinese New Year would be like.

The ritual visitations I have to make, the differing world of my paternal baba relatives who speak Malay and my maternal relatives who speak hokkien or mandarin, the amount of food I consumed and the stress I had to go through on the road, well, it's really not that bad if you actually make an effort to appreciate it.

My tip?

Bring a camera along.
It helps you open up your eyes to the little things :)