Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Chinese Lunar New Year Celebrations 2009 Updated

Post-Birthday and Pre-CNY Present for Myself:

I gotten myself a computer game to entertain myself after my birthday and during the wait till Chinese Lunar New Year. It's titled Three Kingdoms Story 2 (三国立志专 2) and it's about playing a cartoon version of the more sober Romance of The Three Kingdoms. Although it's considered an old game (since 2005), I got hooked to playing it because the animations were really fun and the dialogue between the characters were amusing, entertaining me for hours the few days before Chinese Lunar New Year.

This is the world map where the objective of the game was to conquer all the thirteen cities before the main character (I chose Liu Bei - the goody-doer) reaches an age of 100 years old. Time was spaced out into four seasons - spring, summer, autumn and winter so that means I have 320 turns since Liu Bei was already 20 years old when I first started.
The screenshot was taken fairly early in the game and at the bottom of the screen were my characters then and the assigned character development and specialization that I had chosen for them. From the left, Liu Bei (fire magic & healing), Guan Yu (water magic), Zhang Fei (fire magic), Guan Ping (archer), Zhou Cang (diplomat), Liu Chan (water magic), Liao Hua (healing), Guan Xing (archer), Zhao Yun (tank & fire magic) and Zhuge Liang (fire magic & healing). They did not look much then but as they level up, the characer portraits will change and they would be dorned in better looking armour.
This screenshot was taken during a massive siege against a enemy warlord known as Dong Zhuo. The screen was already nearly empty because many allied troops and enemy troops were killed near the city gates. My characters were trying to bridge the city walls to reach Dong Zhuo and the blue dragon thingy was actually a powerful water magic spell called 水龙计.
The reward scene when Dong Zhuo was finally defeated after the battle.
This was taken during one of those random encounters in the game where I had to rush a small army to protect a city within a limited number of rounds - failing which I would lose one of the cities I had previous conquered. In this battle, the raiders did not stand a chance though as my characters were much stronger by then.

Chinese Lunar New Year Eve Reunion Dinner:

A total of twelve delicious dishes were served during reunion dinner. The photo included some of the very tasty dishes - clockwise from the bottom right hand corner were chilli crabs, pork, mussels, vegetables, fish, roasted duck, non-spicy crab, chicken, cereal prawns and the centre dish were steamed vegetables and some seafood. Reunion dinner lasted from 5pm till 6.30pm.
This was the breakfast taken on the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year - a family custom to have a mix of Chinese and English breakfast - a legacy left behind my grandparents who had seen the colonial times of early Singapore and wanted a fusion celebration in the morning. Chocolate cake, love letters, karopok and ba-gua with English tea. It's a strange combination but it tasted delicious because it's so different from the previous night's reunion dinner fare.

River Hongbao Festival at the Floating Platform:

Another CNY practice in my family was a family outing to the traditional River Hongbao Festival. This year, it was held at the Floating Platform at Marina and we had to wait an hour from 5pm to 6pm because the festival only start at 6pm, which was pretty weird. Anyway, this was some of the very cute looking lantern dolls on the platform. There were many more such dolls but the crowd prevented any decent shots to be uploaded here.
The raging bull was quite realistically made. It seemed to be part of the theme of the festival called 牛转乾坤, which means the turning of chance to one's advantage. This probably had something to do with the forecasts of a terrible recession in the wake of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations.
Another lantern display of beautiful mandarin oranges on trees. Many people posed for pictures here but obviously for security reasons, I will not be uploading those shots taken with my family. The orange lights provided a very surreal feeling for this display if one stares at it long enough. Hahaha.
The entrance to the River Hongbao Festival was seriously decorated with red lanterns, lots and lots of red lanterns. This was by far the most beautiful entrances made for such festivals in years.
The central stage on the Floating Platform. Some dancers had just finishe performing and the stage was set up for some lantern puzzles which I have no patience to wait for to answer. The crowd in front of the stage seemed enthusiastic enough to hold on till the emcees turned up though.
How can anyone forget the mainstay of the River Hongbao Festival? The God of Fortune - a massive lantern standing at more than five storeys high. It seemed to be spraying a shower of golden paper at intervals of one hour because the road was full of such paper. We did not wait for the shower because my father was having some stomach upset so we had to leave early.

The Battle with a mighty cockroach:

When we reached home at around 9pm, everyone was tired from all the walking and crowd squeezing. After settling down, I took a shower and went on to try and finish the rest of the Three Kingdoms Story game and by the time of 12 midnight, I heard a strange cracking sound of wings at my ceiling and noticed a huge cockroach. Without ado, I grabbed the nearest insecticide spray at the bottom of my table and aimed my shot at the monstrosity.

To my dismay, the insecticide spray was nearly empty and it came out as a mini squirt instead. The cockroach, like an experienced fighter plane, immediately headed towards my face...I dodged the cockroach and sprayed it again in mid-air and it took cover behind my bed whilst I was desperately trying to coax more insectide from the bottle. The cockroach seemed to noticed I had some trouble with the can and made a sudden charge at me again, wings batting loudly, intend to crash right into my face. I dodged backwards and tripped over the sideboard of my bed and landed heavily on my clothes hanging on metal frames.

The fall was bad because I was actually standing on my bed trying to get a better view of the hidden cockroach without realizing it was much more intelligent than I thought so being caught offguard, the fall was nearly 60 cm from the sideboard all the way to the floor. I did sprayed the cockroach for the third time in the middle of my fall. Landing on my lower back, I had a minor sprain on my back, cuts on my legs and hands from the metal frames and a streak of skin torn from my left hand. The cockroach crashed into the side of the wall from my third spray and scurried out of my sight when I was trying to recover from the fall.

I thought I was really lucky because I could have broken my spine from the fall or got my back impaled by the metal frames' sharp corners. Neither happened and I received no broken bones either - just a stiff lower back and those cuts and scrapes. The cockroach was not to be seen again even though I made another search of the room. I supposed it must have been one of those elite warrior cockroaches which were sent to avenge its brothers and sisters which I had killed for the past year. Mother Nature sure had her surprises even in such a form.

Lesson learnt from the battle - I should have just struck out and punched the cockroach in mid-air (which I had the chance but I did not take it) instead of struggling with that stupid empty insecticide can. I have ordered a full can to be placed in my room at any time. Lesson for my blog readers - be fiercer than that flying-cockroach-in-the-face in case you backed in the wrong direction and suffer such a fall as I did. Hahaha....

Have a good week ahead - without those cockroaches.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is such a great article.
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