Gong hei fat choi!

Yes, it's Chinese new year once again. I have just got back from the family gathering, mainly involving eating, eating and er... more eating. I may have to starve for a week to balance out the intake of calories. Let me run through today's menu to demonstrate:

Breakfast: Bacon, eggs and toast
Snacks: Pringles, twisty doughnut things covered in syrup and coconut my grandma makes, nuts
Lunch/dinner: Chicken, roast duck, crispy pork, two types of chinese greens, steamed sea bass, prawns, clear soup, rice.
Dessert: Fruit and grass jelly with lychees
Another dessert: Poached pears in red wine with whipped cream
More snacks: Gen yen (fried glutinous rice balls filled with sweet black bean paste)

No, we never made it to the Nintendo Wii... everyone was too afraid of throwing up what they'd eaten... so we had a massive family origami session instead making paper cranes, frogs (which just wouldn't come out right and repeatedly looked like they'd been run over by a rather large truck) and attempts at making some complicated dinosaur which was evenatually abandonded due to no one being able to make head nor tail of the instructions.

If what you do on Chinese new year is a reflection on the coming year, then I shall be extremely happy, well loved, wealthy (I got red packets, something I hardly ever get at Chinese new year), well loved, and very very well fed and fat...

So happy new year to one and all... if you want to know what the year of the Ox holds in store for you, take a look here. My year is looking up already...