Chap Goh Mei Celebration

Chinese New Year or Spring Festival is celebrated from 1st until 15th day of the first month in the chinese Lunar Calendar. As chinese calendar is influenced by the motion of the moon, a bright big full moon usually is evident on the fifteenth day of lunar month.

'Chap Goh Mei' is a Hokkien dialect which mean 'Fifteenth Night' is a significant celebration in Penang whereby majority of Chinese Penangites are Hokkien (Fujian). Over the past years, various activities would be put up to celebrate this auspicious day including sumptous feasting, culture shows, lion dance, dragon dance, lantern lighting, and the highlight of the night - tangerines tossing.

Tangerines or Mandarin oranges toss is a traditional culture popularized by South East Asia Chinese as a means for a single lady to find for her life partner. In the past several decades, the maidens would ride along coastal roads to toss the oranges into the sea with the wish to find a good spouse. Chap Goh Mei was also the only night of the year that the unmarried woman were allowed to meet up or went a date with their sweethearts. And in Penang Esplanade, it turns into an annual event to celebrate the Chinese Valentine's Day which also coincides with Chap Goh Mei.

Many years back, tossing or throwing oranges was organised as a competition whereby a team were made up of females and males and be placed at different location according to their gender. Thousands of Mandarin oranges will be tossing by ladies from the shore towards the sea. Then, these oranges were supposed to be scouped and collected by their male team partners on a boat. And the team with most tangerines would be the winner in this match.

While in traditional Chinese cultural, the Fifteenth night is also celebrated as Lantern Festival. Lantern Festival is also mistakenly called for Mid Autumn Festival in Malaysia/Singapore whereby it is associated with moon cakes. However, the original Lantern Festival is known as Little New Year that marks the official ends of Chinese New Year. During this auspicious day, children will be visiting temples with paper lanterns and having fun trying to solve the riddles on the lanterns. This lantern parade culture is also adopted by Kek Lok Si Temple in Ayer Itam, Penang as thousands of lanterns are lighted up annually for 15 days during Chinese New Year.

Happy Chap Goh Mei

Today is the last day for chinese citizens celebrating Chinese New Year and also a day for us to celebrate Happy Chap Goh Mei. As usual on this day, we still can light up the fireworks and gather round the table enjoying dinner with family members. This morning LJ wakes up early at 6:30am cause he knew that he needs to prepare himself to attend Sunday Mass which located not far from our house. Grandma and dad went out to town as early at 6am to buy some ingredients for tonight dinner. We went to church at 7:30am together with our grandma cause old people loves to meet some old friends in the church. Lovely... After that we had breakfast at JPJ. Later on we went back but on the way back home, there is a group of youngsters who perform lion dance and LJ loves to watch the lion dancing or moving around. He still guess what the heck is that big fury colorful animal dancing around together with the sound. Ha... He pretty sure that is a big CAT cause it looks a like. Oh well, just let him be... By then he will know it sooner or later.

LJ with peanut sweetLJ with daddyLJ meet new friendGroup of lion danceAnd not forget, the drum everything...And of course the head of the lionPreparing...Lion performance

~HAPPY CHAP GOH MEI~

KFC

Tonight we went to KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) for dinner and LJ have ate 1 bun + potatoes. Thumbs up to him.. and he acts so good especially in front of the waitress and all the waitress loves him at his first sight and he killed lots maybe dozen of young girls in there. Haha.. What can I say.. He's my precious little ones..

Differences..

Can you see the differences?? I can see lots of different. The way their looks, wearing, style, body figure and everything. Oh My~ And my grandpa grandma getting older and older already. The time flies so fast and we as their children or grand children and now great grandchildren are growing bigger and bigger.
The 1st picture really antique and classic picture.
Sitting from left : A. Hung, Grandma, Great Grandma, Grandpa with A. King and A. Siew
Standing from left : A. Mee, Mum, Uncle Ling and A. Nyuk

Around Year 1980Year 2010

My family...

Tonight we do a small family gathering at my hubby's side to celebrate Chinese New Year (I know is a little bit late now) cause most of the relatives are not staying in the local here but still CNY day. Since they all coming back yesterday, so we took this opportunity to gather around and have dinner together then of course took some memorable pictures. They all are so cute until you can see great grandma and 1st uncle holding a 'cempedak' and take pictures. Funny~ haha.. But for the information, the Mr. Cempedak is not one of our family member. Don't misunderstanding here.. Haha.. Just that we got lots of cempedak but also not for sale. Lucky that we live at here cause got lots of fruits to eat such as 'man ko long', 'cempedak', king of fruit durians, rambutans, 'langsat', dragon fruit, 'limau', vegetables, fish, bla bla bla.. can't name it all.. When you people got time can visit my house. I can show all of it to you. Haha..

Sitting from left : 1st Gu Wu, Great Grandma, 1st Gu Nei and Ah NiuSitting from left : 2nd Gu Wu, Great Grandma and 2nd Gu NeiOur family
Sitting from left : Me, Monica, Great Grandma, Teresa, Dad with Christina
Standing from left : Hubby, Simon, Mum with Karson, Ah Kiong and Sister in law (Ah Ping)

13 months

LJ's 13 months

1. Your weight is 10.5kgs and a healthy boy
   
2. You got lots of teeth now
3. You love to eat and you probably will eat everything that appears in front of your eyes no matter how sour, bitter or sweet that might be.
   
4. You enjoy walking nowadays and it helps you a lot by practising your both legs. You started to chase people especially with the small kids who is older or younger than you.
   
5. You love to make friends especially small kids too and when you make friends you'll started to scream out loud and get some toys to play with.
6. You babble a lot and loves to call 'pa pa' meaning daddy, 'ma ma' that's me, 'e e' meaning 'da bien', 'mam mam' meaning you want to eat, 'neng neng' meaning you want some milk.
7. You learn how to wave bye bye to someone especially when we took you out to town you'll wave to grandma or Christina first before entering the car. Really cute of you.
8. You are so social especially in public. Your daddy of course really felt embarrassed when we reach to somewhere place in public and you always yelled 'pa pa' or scream out loud to make people pay attention on you.

I can't believe how fast you are growing. You are the light of our life.

Having Dinner

Tonight we are going to have a dinner with the dancer. Not a super duper younger dancer I meant. Oh well, is my mum's dancing club that are the prettiest mummy in the world who are joining in. Haha.. They all are very lovely especially when they are dancing. Smooth some more.. And their body figure just like the youngster. Not so bad at all oh.. Although they have minimum 3 children. Oh my.. How can they do that?? Well, there is the answer of it. Dancing... Does dancing really can make you slim down?? Hmm... Yes!! Cause it still have done exercise a lots and by here you can burn all your calories and useless 'oil' at your body. By the way, you can make some new friends and they all are very friendly. No worries..

3rd Day of CNY...

Today we just received our sample of the group photo that we took yesterday. The photographer wash all the photo samples for us to view and choose the prettiest, the handsomest, the best photo to put at our own home. The hardest part for us is to choose the photo. Luckily the photographer snap lots and lots of picture of us to choose cause the crowd were too big, huge and many with different character. Oh my.. until the photographer on that day really sweat all over his head. Haha.. The photo below is haven't redone yet. So don't care about the background but this is the best photo that we choose.

Our big family photo... Ling's family and siblings
Sitting from left : A. Siew, Uncle Ling, Grandma, Grandpa, A. King
Standing from left : A. Hung, A. Nyuk, My mum and A. MeeLing's family
Sitting from left : Gi Gi, Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Ling
Standing from left : Jerome, Jeffrey, Margaret Lee, AJ, Jimmy, Alice and Ah SoonNgu's family
Sitting from left : Declan, Mum and Dad
Standing from left : LJ, me, Hubby and Devin
Too bad sister Irene stuck in UK but here from us to you...Tiong's family
Sitting from left : Francis, A. Nyuk, Uncle Tiong and Linda
Standing from left : Annie, Jack, Steven, Kelvin and TeresaTing's family
Sitting from left : Sharon, A. Mee and Uncle Ting
Standing from left : Vivien, Stella and RaymondWong's family
Sitting from left : A. Siew, Uncle Wong with Dabriella and Calvin
Standing from left : Adelyn and BryanTing's family
Sitting from left : A. Hung with Ah Xin and Uncle Ting
Standing from left : Ah Hen and DicksonTiong's family
Sitting from left : A. King with Trevis, Uncle Tiong with Trevor and ChloeMy family

2nd Night of CNY...

We continue again our journey to our dinner at Foo Chow Restaurant treat by our grandparents. Cause for sure senior peoples love gathering and this really sounds good. I love this feeling cause all my aunties are from the outstation, so is a good opportunity for all of us to gather round in a small house with lots of parents, children, grand children and now great grand children. Oh my.. Is countless.. Tonight dinner had been booked for 5 tables meaning got 50 peoples for the gathering. WOW~ I'm very excited to see our family group photo. Will be very precious.. Hehe.. After our dinner we went to our grandpa's house to drop my grandma and the maid to their house cause we'll continue our visiting to the grandpa's side family. When we drop them to the house, got a pack of lion dance people at the opposite of our house. So grandpa invited them to have a lion dance at our side here.

Hubby with LJMe and LJFrom left : LJ, me, Teresa and Ah Xin (2 months younger than LJ)View from the outside of grandpa's houseA word 'Ji' make by the lion dance people

2nd Day of CNY...

Busy busy day... Today we got lots of appointment to do. First of all we went for photo shot at Honeymoon Bridal. Not just us, is ALL of Ling's family. Oh well, can't be count how many of them. We met together at the bridal shop at 10am and of course some of them a little bit late than we appoint. The place really crowded by us and the bridal shop is opened especially for us all only. Geng neh... But I still can't upload the family group photo first cause of course is still at the photographer side but we can see it by tomorrow. Yeah..

At the bridal shopStill prepare...LJ playing peek-a-booAt Auntie King's houseLJ with his cousinsLJ with Giu GiuHaving fun with toys