Five things I miss most about Chinese New Year

While Chun See reminisces and muses about the five things he would not miss about Chinese New Year (CNY), I thought the sentimental fool in me would do just the opposite. Here are the five things I miss most about the CNY of yesteryear.

• My childhood home at Club Street.
  This is the Headquarters. All my relatives - uncles and aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews would gather at this "checkpoint" on the first day of the New Year. It was obvious why we called our home at Club Street the HQ - simply because the matriarch of our extended family, my paternal grandmother lived there. Everyone one, young and old, would come to pay her respect (and get angpow) on the first day of the New Year. She passed on in the late 80s, and for a while, there was no HQ for gathering. Subsequently, my first aunt's home at Holland Drive was assigned the new HQ. But she too passed on several years ago. Today, the new HQ is at one of my cousin's house at King's Road, also somewhere near Holland Drive.
  
  
• My pajamas
  Call me silly, but when I was a young boy, I used to love wearing pajamas to bed (now no lah, juz a pair of shorts and bare-chested). On the eve of CNY, my mum would made us kids wear new pajamas she bought from the market. Oh, I'm sure you know those pajamas. It's those stripe-pattern pajamas with pull-strings pants normally worn by Ah Peks. But because we were kids, mum usually got us the elastic-band type. What's the significance of wearing new pajamas on the eve? I dun think kids these days, especially the boys, wear pajamas. My boys certainly don't.
  
  
• Gambling
  Yes, believe it or not, we kids were allowed to gamble during CNY, not with peanuts or sweets, mind you. We gambled using real money from our angpow. But the stakes, in this instance, are really peanuts - each round only could bet no more than 10 cents. But we have supervision from our parents, who told us that we could only play the cards (another phrase for gambling, heheh) on CNY. They must have imparted us the right value lor. Why? None of us kids turned into gambling addicts, my 4-D and lottery "addiction" aside. Hehehehe...
  
  
• Angpow
  Of course, children are the happiest creatures on earth comes CNY. They can indulge in all the cookies, sweets and soft-drink all day, and mums would not bat an eye-lid. What's more, they get lots and lots of angpow or red pockets. When I was a kid, the angpow my siblings and I collected could hit at least $200 each. We would compare and see which one of us got the highest amount. Now, I dun get angpow anymore, which is fine. But what is not so fine is that I now must GIVE angpow to every kid who crosses my path, even total strangers whom I meet at my relative's house. Not fair one. LOL.
  
  
• Firecrackers
  When the gahmen banned firecrackers, somehow, much of the spirit of CNY also disappeared along with the ban. One of my aunts who stayed in the same building at Club Street hawked firecrackers, so I sort of have free "supply" of firecrackers to play with on CNY. One of the favorite pastimes of us kids then were to quietly sneaked up behind an unsuspecting neighborhood kid with a "rocket" fire-crackers, lit it up, and startled the kid out of his pants when the firecracker "erupted" with a loud bang, leaving some of them in tears. Yes, we were a bunch of sadists, but hey, we were juz kids... LOL
  

Well, so much for the CNY memories. Yesterday, the first day of CNY, was a flurry of visitations. One of our stops was at the Slim Lady's grandma's at Yishun where we stopped for lunch. I've noticed, year after year, that granny always indulges us with nothing but meat on her dinning table. Can someone tell me what's the significance of eating meat on CNY?


Oh, and here's a shot of my mum's popiah. Sorry if I'm beginning to sound like a broken record on my entries on popiah. I know I've blogged about my mum's popiah in a number of entries already - here, there and everywhere. But I'm really a sucker on this dish! Yum!

Victor, come my house lah. Doesn't the popiah look yummy? Dun say I neber invite you hor.

LOL.

Category: Yesteryear