Chinese New Year

February 18 was the first day of Chinese New Year. The Chinese follow the lunar calendar, hence the seemingly arbitrary date for celebrating the new year. This also means the date changes every year. This year is the year of the Pig (the golden pig apparently). Admittedly, I don't know much about the Chinese zodiac except that there are 12 animals in it.

Anyways, I went back to my parents house in Auckland to celebrate the new year since I wanted to make the most of it being in a weekend. On Sunday, my parents decided to have an 'open house' from 2-6 in the afternoon. 'Open house' means that you open your home for any visitors. This is a very common practice in Malaysia. It is customary to have an open house for the first 2-3 days of the new year and people can drop in at anytime during the day or night. Even at 11pm! The hosts will usually have at least an array of special Chinese new year cookies and cakes for visitors. Some will also have more substantial food (like various curry, satay, noodles, etc). Mum decided to have a few cookies and dishes. Visitors were mostly people from their church who wanted to experience what Chinese new year celebrations were like.

Its been about 10 years since we have done any sort of open house for new year and we are not keen to repeat it anytime soon! Interestingly enough, having an open house is something one cannot avoid when in Malaysia unless you are away on holiday. It is simply not acceptable to stay at home and not have visitors. It was great doing that briefly this year, but I think we were all tired out from it!

It felt quite nice going back for Chinese New Year. On the eve, it's customary to have a family reunion dinner so as it was a Saturday, mum cooked up a storm, so it was certainly worth it!

Lent

Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. This year, I have decided to observe Lent - so I am giving up alcohol and chocolate. I thought it would be good to practice spiritual discipline and focus on Jesus. As I was thinking about it, I realised that it was hard for me to settle on something to give up for Lent because it was inconvenient - I never know when I would feel like a nice beer (with the nice warm weather we are having lately) and I'm not a huge chocolate fan, but I do reasonably often eat chocolate things. And I don't drink coffee and very seldom drink tea, so hot chocolate is my drink of choice at cafes.

I hope that this would give me a renewed appreciation of Jesus' sacrifice. Not just his suffering on the cross, but the fact that he chose to come to live as a human and face the temptations and challenges that we face as humans. Its all to easy to take all this for granted, hence my reason for observing Lent this year.