开工大吉!
My father’s company lunch with all their business associates and closest friends marks the start of the new working year.
I’ve been going to this all-important lunch since I was born. When I was a kid, this was my favourite day of the new year.
Everybody knows, you wear new clothes on the 1st day of Chinese New Year. But in my family, we save our most splendid outfits for the 2nd day.
I would spend the morning running amok with the rest of the children in my father’s office; the afternoon huddling and chattering with my best friend in the restaurant.
The elaborate lunch always ended sometime in the very late afternoon. But my father and his closest and oldest friends (since their childhoods) didn’t let up. They moved the party from house to house till late in the night when they fed us roti prata from the only food stall that was nearby and still opened.
When we reached home way past our bedtimes, we would count our ang pows. It was the best day of Chinese New Year.
Now I’m all grown-up.
My father’s childhood friends still turn up for his company lunch, but not their children. Not my childhood friends. The uncles and aunties take up just 1 table among the many others filled with business associates.
I spend a minute or two missing my friends. I spend maybe another five to ten minutes repeating stories of my childhood to Mr Fluffy Hubby. I sigh, but I am soon distracted.
My child is shrieking with delight at seeing her granduncle. She is wishing him happy new year and exchanging oranges with him. She is holding on to them like they are her most precious possessions. (I will soon find out I am not allowed to exchange these oranges for others.)
The uncles and aunties are crooning at her. They are marvelling at how big and how pretty and how articulate and how clever she is.
She is dressed in her finest clothes — a floaty pink princess dress given by her paternal grandmother — and she is having a ball!
At night, we go over to my elder brother’s place for dinner.
Mr Fluffy Hubby stays to play mahjong with the rest of the men in my family.
I bring our little girl home to sleep. I wait up for Mr Fluffy Hubby till I fall asleep too.
Our 2nd day of Chinese New Year — as good as the 1st day of Chinese New Year, as good as ever.
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And there are 15 days of CNY!
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