Lunar New Year's Eve // of good food, good company and good sights

2 weekends ago marked the arrival of a new lunar new year, the year of the Snake, which is placed the 6th in the Chinese Zodiac Calendar right after the Dragon. And, being a true-blue Malaysian-Chinese who was brought up in a way that traditional Chinese customs and culture are important to follow suit, the reunion dinner on the eve of the Lunar New Year depicts the get together of families, the joy of catching up with extended family members and, well, a lot of trumpets being blown. haha Usually, we would all gather at my grandparents' place to enjoy my grandma's home cooked dishes, but it has been around 5 years since my paternal family stopped cooking at home for the reunion dinner since it was too tiresome for my grandparents and I guess, nobody really wanted to wash all the dishes. Deep down.

This year, we booked a table at this pretty famous restaurant, Daiman Pekin in the Mount Austin area, which was around a 20-min drive from my house. We went there two years ago and the food was just so-so, so I wasn't very thrilled to be there, in terms of food. However, to my surprise, the menu this year was way tastier than previous years. We tossed the usual 'yeesang' with salmon slices (my fav!), abalone with broccoli, yam rice, steamed fish with ginger slices on top, really good drunken prawn and the list goes on. My highlight among all the yummy dishes was the scallop soup, definitely! This year, instead of the monotonous shark fin's soup, we opted for scallop instead. My paternal family wasn't all that into activism against shark's fin soup, well, activism against any cause, as far as I can remember. So, for them to actually go out of the way from the usual wealth-signifying bowl of soup, was surprising but it made me smile, nevertheless.

the heavenly scallop soup

my familia

After dinner, we all gathered at my second aunt's place for a game of blackjack and for the midnight countdown! Since we're pretty much amateur gamblers, nobody dared to bet more than RM2.00, except for my grandpa. I think it was his lil secret to distribute some to his grandkids. hahaha We headed out to the streets to check out the ongoing fireworks that lit up the ivory sky, and also to fire some of our own.

My aunt from Singapore bought some 'Kongming lanterns' or Chinese sky lanterns for us to let out into the sky. The sky lanterns are basically like small hot air balloons that rises into the air once lit because the flame heats the air inside the lantern and thus lowering its density. The sky lantern is only airborne for as long as the flame stays alight, after which the lantern sinks back to the ground. But by then, it might have flown to God knows where.lol