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Mandarin oranges, sweets, tarts, melon seeds and cookies are the commonly seen fruits and food during the Chinese New Year celebrations. These are the food served when relatives and friends pay each other a visit.

There is a round or hexagonal or octagonal tray with six or eight individual compartments being used to store sweets, melon seeds and so on. This item is called the “Tray of Togetherness“. The number six symbolises luck and the number eight symbolises fortune. 

Tray of Togetherness (Tray Cover) :

Why is the tray called “Tray of Togetherness”? Well, Chinese New Year is a time for the family to get together and the tray of togetherness actually represents the family gatherings.

Tray of Togetherness (6 Compartments) :

From the picture above, you can see that there are altogether 6 compartments within the tray. Each compartment is filled with a treat and each with its own meaning.

The melon seeds represent wealth and the lotus-root seeds represent fertility. As for the sweets, they represent a sweet new year.

Pineapple Tarts :

Kueh Bangit (Cookies) :

Mandarin Oranges with Hong Bao (Red Packet) :

By the way, most of these are heaty food. A piece of advice is to drink more water after eating the cookies, love letters, pineapple tarts and so on. The best is to drink more herbal tea to prevent getting sore throat or other illnesses.

Let us stay healthy and energetic to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Gong Xi Fa Cai!!

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How time flies? This year is another round of the Year of the OX for us to celebrate Chinese New Year. According to the Chinese Lunar Calendar, this is the 12-year cycle for the 12 different types of animal to take their turns.

My sister had bought an attractive and colourful cow statue in the Year of the OX exactly 12 years ago. It was bought for the-then Year of the OX for us to celebrate Chinese New Year. We took out this colourful cow statue and did some cleanup after it was kept for so many years.

Colourful Cow Statue :

Although the colour of the cow statue is fading, it is still in a very good condition. This cow statue has been with us for 12 long years and it brings us to remember those good old days that we have had.

We also like the 3 Chinese characters “Niu Lai Yun” being displayed on the script holding by the cow. The characters mean :

The arrival of the cow brings along luck

I wish the Year of the OX would bring us lots of good luck, good fortune and good health starting from the Chinese New Year. Let us hope it will start another bull run this year to boost up the world economy.

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Most of the people visit relatives and friends during the Chinese New Year. Some people prefer to catch the movies if they feel bored.

Besides seeing movies, I think one of the most enjoyable leisure activities is to play the Mahjong game with the family, relatives or friends. You just need to find 4 persons and a Mahjong table to start the game. 

Here is a picture of the Mahjong :

Mahjong requires lots of skill, calculation, memorization, strategy and luck to win the game if not money. You will feel that time passes very quickly if you pay full attention to playing the Mahjong game.

Mahjong Tiles :

My family and I play Mahjong during the Chinese New Year only and we don’t touch the Mahjong set at any other time of the year. We treat it as a leisure for the family and relatives to get together to have some fun during the festive season.

Mahjong Accessories :

It brings us lots of laughters to play Mahjong with the family so it doesn’t really matter if we win or lose the game. I find that playing Mahjong during Chinese Near Year bring the family, relatives and friends to come closer.

So, Mahjong is a leisure game to us rather than a gamble although we do play with a little sum of money. This is just a fun game to lift up the spirit of the festive season.

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Today is the second day of the first month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar, I would like to wish all Chinese have a very HAPPY & PROSPEROUS CHINESE NEW YEAR!!

This year is the Golden OX Year and it is an important time for all Chinese from all over the world, whether you are living in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, Indonesia, Thailand, US, UK, Canada and so on, to celebrate Chinese New Year.

One of the time-honoured traditions of celebrating Chinese New Year is to give out the customary “red packet” or “Hong Bao” or “Ang Pow” which is usually a red envelope. What does it contain inside? Well, the “Hong Bao” usually contains cash inside. At times, it may contain lottery ticket as some employers prefer this to giving cash. 

Here is a picture of how the customary “red packet” or “Hong Bao” or “Ang Pow” look like :

You might be curious to know what the amount is like inside the “red packet” or “Hong Bao”. Well, it comes with varying amount of money inside but the value has to be an even number which signifies happiness. 

In fact, the amount of cash within is irrelevant so long as it is an even number because the “red packet” or “Hong Bao” symbolises good luck, auspicious, fortune and so on. The very act of giving a red packet to someone means you are wishing the recipient good luck.

I wish you good luck and good prosperity whether or not you celebrate Chinese New Year. Collect or give out more customary “red packets” or “Hong Bao” or “Ang Pow” in this time-honoured traditions of celebrating the Chinese New Year. Happy holiday! 

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Happy Chinese New Year or Happy Lunar New Year!!! Gong Xi Fa Cai to everybody.

Let us welcome the arrival of the “Year Of The OX“. As this is the Golden Cow year, it signifies a good harvest year to bring along good prosperity and lots of wealth to the world.

As year 2008 cum the Year of the Rat was a turbulent year, let’s hope that year 2009 cum the Year of the OX would be a very much better year than the last one in all walks of life. How we wish the Golden Cow could start another bull run in the stock markets around the world.

Let us enjoy ourselves in this festive season of the east and forget about the world economic downturn for now. Pay your parents, relatives and friends a visit to wish them well.

Here is a very entertaining Happy Chinese New Year song sung by the radio DJs of the FM98.8 radio station. The song title is roughly translated to “Let The Wind of The Spring Blow To Your House” (Chun Feng Chui Dao Ni De Jia).

Enjoy watching the Chinese New Year video clip. Once again, Happy Chinese New Year to you and your family.

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We chose to have our Chinese New Year reunion dinner at home for the family to get together. I think it is very heart-warming to enjoy the delicious home-cooked reunion feast with the family. 

We used to have the Chinese New Year traditional food in the past and it is no difference for this year. Although the world economy is slowing down and everybody is tightening the belt, I’m glad that we are still able to continue to enjoy those good food that we used to have had traditionally.

The Chinese New Year traditional food that I’m referring to are abalone, mushroom, prawns, scallops, lotus-root soup, oysters and so on. You will know that these are mostly expensive food at one glance 🙂

Chinese New Year Reunion Feast :

Scallops with Oysters :

Broccoli with Scallops :

Abalone with Gravy :

Fried Prawns :

Roast Duck :

Roast Pork :

I really enjoyed our home-cooked Chinese New Year reunion dinner very much. The most important is that this was a time for the whole family to get together and enjoy the traditional food. This was indeed a very heart-warming moment.
 

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Chinese New Year is around the corner. We were busy doing the house-keeping to welcome the Year of the Ox. Very soon, we have to say “good-bye” to the Year of the Rat. 

I spent half a day cleaning my bathroom and scrubbing the floor to make sure that all the dusts and dirts were cleaned away. Besides house-keeping, my family and I spent some time decorating our house with the Chinese New Year auspicious items.

“Gong Xi Fa Cai” Paper Fan (Good Wealth) :

God of Fortune :

Chinese Character “Fu” (Prosperity) :

Auspicious Cow Decorations :

Pussy Willow (Salix Caprea) :

Mandarin Oranges :

We also prepared food for the Chinese New Year reunion dinner on Sunday. One of our favourite dishes is abalone. I have taken some pictures after opening a few cans of abalone.

Double Abalone :

Abalone on the chopping board :

More pictures will be coming up in the next Blog post on the Chinese New Year reunion dinner. Stay tuned.
 

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I had published a Blog post on 09 Jan 2009 pertaining to the purchase of the AKLTG’s newly-released book entitled “Profit from the Panic” at a pre-launch price. This book had finally been officially launched on 20 Jan 2009.

The 3 authors, namely Adam Khoo, Conrad Alvin Lim and Ryan Huang, had been interviewed by the news anchors of the Channel News Asia recently as the “Profit from the Panic” book was featured on its prime-time news.

Here is the interview of the “Profit from the Panic” authors by CNA :

As mentioned in my earlier Blog post, 100% of the authors royalties will be donated to charities. So far, there are 2 charities being identified and they are the Straits Times Pocket Money Fund and the AIDHA. 

The ST Pocket Money Fund was initiated on 01 Oct 2000, ie. Children’s Day, by the Straits Times English newspaper. The aim is to raise the awareness of the plight of children from low-income families who were attending school without proper breakfast or pocket money to sustain their day in school.

AIDHA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to enriching the lives of low income migrant women through financial education.

Buying this “Profit from the Panic” book is in a way helping the children and migrant women from the low-income families. Besides goodwill, you can learn how to gain profit from the panic in the current bearish stock markets as taught by the profound experts and national best-seller authors such as Adam Khoo, Conrad Alvin Lim and Ryan Huang.

I would say this is killing two birds with one stone if you pick up the “Profit from the Panic” book. Adam Khoo and his co-authors share the secrets on how you can earn money from the financial crisis. The choice is yours to make but please make a wise one.

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If you scroll down and look at the right-hand side of the sidebar of this “Laingan.com” Blog, you will notice that I have included a new feature called “Global Translator“. You can also find those tiny images showing the flags of 34 countries. 

This Global Translator is a free and open source WordPress Plugin which is created by “nothing2hide.net“. It has the capability to automatically translate your blog in 34 different languages, namely :

Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croat, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Rumanian, Russian, Serbian,  Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

My “Laingan.com” Blog is written in English and the Global Translator is beneficial to those non-English readers if their preferred languages fall into the 33 different languages (excluding English) stated above.

Global Translator has the ability to provide the translations by using the 4 different Translation Engines, namely Google Translation Engine, Babel Fish, Promt and FreeTranslations.com. I’m using Google Translation Engine in this “Laingan.com” Blog to do the translation.

As for the quality of the translation, I would say it ranges from good to weird at times. Some of the words or phrases have different meaning once they are being translated from English to ,say, Chinese. It sounds funny and ridiculous at times.

Anyway, Global Translator is a good WordPress Plugin for you to install it to your Blog if you wish your non-English readers or visitors to understand what you have written in your Blog posts. Give it a try.

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I have sent out only 3 Chinese New Year greeting cards this year as I have misplaced the addresses of the rest of my friends. Actually, I used to send festive season cards to my friends in the past but I didn’t send any last year as I was busy. But I think it is an excuse to use the word “busy” to defend yourself for not doing certain thing.

I always believe that you will make thing happen if you have the heart to do it. In contrary to this, you will find 1001 excuses for not doing certain things especially those things that you don’t see the need to do. Busy is often the best excuse to be used. Your procrastination will lead you to think about it without taking any action if you didn’t have the heart to do something.

Since I have so much free time this year due to the world economic slowdown, no excuse for me to say I have no time to send Chinese New Year greeting cards to people. Sending greeting cards to my friends is to let them know that I still think of them and I wish them well.

I think it is very fun if we got the inspiration to write some unique well-wishing messages. It requires a little bit of creativity to make it interesting. If your messages were written with sincerity, creativity, care and concern, I believe it will help to put on a smile on your friends’ or relatives’ face. 

Then, your greeting card is more than just a normal card as it fills with your love. It warms the heart and touches the soul of whoever receiving your season greetings.

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