Decorations of Firecrackers

At the Chinese New Year light-up in Chinatown, at the stroke of midnight on the first day of the Lunar New Year, firecrackers are set off under controlled conditions by the Singapore Tourism Board. Other occasions where firecrackers are allowed to be set off are determined by the tourism board or other government organizations. However, they are not allowed to be commercially sold.

It's believed that setting off firecrackers during the Lunar New Year,
will ward evil spirits away with it's loud cracking noises.

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Today is the 1st day of the Lunar New Year.
Here's wishing all Chinese blogger friends..
A Happy & Prosperous Year of the OX
恭喜发财，花开福贵！！！

Flowers representing the Lunar New Year

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The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum is a living cultural monument in the heart of Chinatown(Singapore) housing what Buddhist leaders regard as the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic in a magnificent Relic Stupa composed of 420kg of gold donated by devotees.

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These metal bin incinerators are used by the Chinese in burning paper offerings during prayers. To avoid particles from flying all over the place and polluting the air.
My other metals @ Napaboaniya APAD

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It's Mid Autumn Festival .
The 15th day of the lunar 8th month.
Also known as Lantern Festival or Mooncake Festival.
Display of some floating lanterns at Clark Quay by the river.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar (the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year), and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:

• Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
• Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
• Carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns
• Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e(simplified Chinese: 嫦娥; traditional Chinese: 嫦娥; pinyin: cháng'é)
• Planting Mid-Autumn trees
• Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
• Fire Dragon Dances

Meaning of the festival extracted from here.

Dragon dance performance by a Shanghai dance troupe
at Clark Quay, Singapore.

I took close to 600 pictures while there.
I've learned, taking pictures at over-crowded places puts me and my camera at risk!
One of the experience suffered was a man knocking hard onto the edge of my camera.
For a split second I was "stunned", with my jaws almost touching my ground.
Lesson learned, be EXTREMELY careful with the hands firmly on the camera at all time!!

Photos will be cast randomly on Napaboaniya APAD.

My other WSS entry of Chang'e @ Napaboaniya APAD

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Today's also the lunar birthday of our youngest family member's birthday.
My niece turns 1.
In conjunction with the Mid-Autumn festival,
we all celebrated over at my MIL's house.
1st year milestone in her life, made me realise the past year simply flew by me.

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It's Teacher's Day - 1st Sept.
Gifts from my students.
Here's also wishing all teachers a Happy Teacher's Day!!!
Note: I'm not an academic teacher.I'm a swim coach/instructor.
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After finishing on my money origami last week. Came the day of my grandmother's death anniversary. On this day, we offered her favourite dishes at the alter, bought paper jewellery,clothes,her favourite game set-mahjong, handbags and some cosmetics.
After prayers, we carried on to burn all those offerings to her.Pictures at :
top left - Paper Mahjong set
top right - Paper clothings
center - Ancestor Tablet
bottom left - Paper money and fruits
bottom right - Favourite food dishes

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I did paper money origami. Except these ain't normal paper.
These are money....money for the dead.
In a few days time, it will be my grandmother's death anniversary.
We'll be burning these money for her to spend in the other world.
We could have simply burnt it as it is, unfolded.
But it's said, that folding the money into the shape of an ingot enhances the value.
So here I am doing money origami.....
I've still got a long way to go with the many stacks we bought...GUlPZ!

My other WSS @ Napaboaniya APAD

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Today is Dumpling Festival @ DragonBoat Festival.
*Click on links to learn more about the history of these Chinese Festivals*

Most families eat rice dumplings in the shape of triangular, with fillings inside. With choice of meat or vegetarian.

The older generation still makes their own dumplings. However I make terrible ones with the rice fillings spilling out all over the place! My MIL barred me from helping her with them. Which in this case, is fine with me :P
My job is only to EAT them!!!
My MIL makes great bak-zhangs (dumplings) with fatty meat and lots of chestnuts. Whenever we go over we'll definitely takes lots of these home and have them over the next couple of days. As a meal or a snack.




We also celebrated my Almighty's Queen birthday last night. With a great vegetarian buffet at one of the hotels. Didn't manage to take any pictures of the food, we were all starving by the time there was a table available :P

We bought her a set of mother of pearl earrings with matching pendant. I hope she likes them :)
It occurred to me recently, while making a video slide show for her consisting of our family pictures that age is catching up with my Almighty Queen. It scares me! Serious!
It's hard not to notice both my kids are growing up everyday...FAST! But it slipped my mind that at the same time, everyone else grows as well.
Call me chicken! But it's a scary thought for me to see my very own parents getting old with age.

My Other WSS here.

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The entire week was gray. Like I've mentioned on my Tuesday's post here. I was freaked out with matters of the paranormal. On Wednesday morning, a phone call was received saying one of my grand uncle passed away. Entire week's center of attraction was the funeral wake.

There are things left unexplained scientifically. Chinese believe that during Red(examples; weddings or births) or White(examples; deaths) matters. Certain people's luck would crash with the person holding the 'red' or 'white' matter.
In this case, it's 'White' since it's a funeral. I attended the burial yesterday. The night before the burial, I phoned my Almighty Queen to ask her check the Chinese almanac- 通書 to see which of the Chinese Zodiac 'animals' will not be in much luck on Saturday. She didn't have the almanac and told me to check with my uncle (the son of the deceased) and told me it should be stated on the paper pasted on the wall of the funeral wake.
My hopes were dashed! The funeral wake was a Christian one. NOTHING was written on which Chinese zodiac animals should 'avoid' the wake!!!! I went to the wake on behalf of my Almighty King whom was out station.

Believe it or not, I came back from the burial site really sick.
Entire body was weak to the extend that touching any part of my skin is painful, throat was unbelievably painful, swallowing my own saliva or water is a torture. Head was attacked by a severe case of migraine. Eyes swell up real bad.
I came back sat in front of my notebook and was basically typing words at a snail speed eyes straining to see the screen. I gave up and went to bed, sleeping and waking up every half hour. It was torturous.

Sometime in the evening, I went to my house alter and lite up joss-sticks for both Buddha and ancestors. I prayed for family wellness and told my ancestors to 'watch over me'. I took a short nap after that. I woke up with NO MORE PAIN in my throat.
Today I'm not even feeling the pain in my bones and my migraine is gone.
How to explain everything? I dunno.

A case of "crash" or ?!?!?!
Then how about the case of me suddenly feeling no more throat pain?

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Playground @ Big Splash


I wanted a ride on those, the vendor stared hard at me like I was an idiot.
No need for motor license.No Traffic Light. No Accidents Involved.
2 Bucks for 5 minutes.

Saw this while we were there.
Can anyone imagine a 90year old hopping like a kangaroo?!?!
My 2 kiddos persuaded me into allowing them act like kangaroos the next trip there.
We also went to the temple sometime this week for ChingMing Festival.
A festival for Chinese to pay respects and grave sweep our deceased ancestors. Since none of my deceased relatives/ancestors were buried. We went to their final resting place at a temple.
Though armed with the camera in hand, I didn't want to be disrespectful in taking the pictures inside the hall. All I took was a photo taken of 3 Chinese words engraved on a signboard just at the entrance of the Tablet(Memorial) Hall. Words - 思先堂 which means "Memory Hall of Ancestors".

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My Work "Tool"

Today is the First day of work after the Lunar New Year Vacation for me.
It's also the 7th day of CNY, which is everyone's birthday.
Today every Chinese is considered a year older.

*updated* I'm sooo mad at myself! The reason here!


What happened last week at my condominium. Read here.

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Today is the 4th day of the Lunar New Year. The Chinese believe that on this day, The Kitchen God returns back to earth after reporting to Heaven on each family. The above pictures are offerings to the Kitchen God. Each item has got their own significant meanings. The apples are imprinted with the 4 words meaning "Welcoming Wealth and Luck". The bigger tray is filled with peanuts,yam,pumpkin,beetroot & Chinese leek.

It's back to work for most people on Monday and school for kids. The lunar new year festival ends after 15 days. On the 15th day, it is often celebrated as the Chinese Valentine's Day.

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Wishing all Chinese friends - Gong Hey Fatt Choy ; Long Ma Jin Shen!!!!
It's the 2nd day of the Lunar New Year. We ushered the Ratatouille year quietly at midnite the day before at home watching the countdown. Seeing the crowd at Chinatown on national tv made us feel so comfortable. Probably half of the Chinese population were there! Would have been a disaster if we went there together with the 2 kids. The headlines the following day might have screamed out "Family of 4 got squashed!!"

Everything went well and joyeux on the first day till DD fell backwards and hit her back with her howling and groaning in pain. Thank god she didn't sprain her back or anything. Today we went over to The Man mom's house for the opening year lunch. It's the day that most family will switch on their gas the first time of the lunar year cooking up a storm with loads of dishes with lucky and significant dish names.

Like having a whole fish, the word for fish, "Yu," sounds like the words both for wish and abundance. ; prawns which has the similar vocal pronunciation of Ha Ha Ha (laughs) meaning we'll all have a merry and happy year ahead; abalone which Chinese name is called 'Bao Yu', Pau means ‘to bag’ in Chinese, and so in relation to the New Year it symbolizes that one will be able to ’bag’ anything one wants in the coming 12 months. There's still an array of dishes that with lucky meanings. I'll skip them all in fear of salivating all over my keyboard.

Tomorrow is the 3rd day of Lunar New Year. With the Chinese pronunciation of the 3rd day as chu san which literally means "last day of Chinese funeral wake". Chinese consider it unlucky to have visitors. Families who had an immediate kin deceased in the past 3 years will not go house-visiting as a form of respect to the dead. The third day of the New Year is allocated to grave-visiting instead.
Another reason is because on the 3rd day it's called chi kou meaning that it is easy to get into arguments.

However, the 3rd and 4th day is also reserved for son in-laws to pay their parents in-law a visit.
Tomorrow we're heading to Almighty Queen's house for visiting!! She'll be back from her trip later tonite.

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