New Year’s Eve…

So what did you all do on New Year’s Eve? Joined the crowd for the countdown at 12 midnight? Went for a grand (expensive) dinner at some posh restaurant…or did you have a simple one at home, like me?

We went to Selangau the day before (through the heavy downpour and the flood here and there) as Melissa had a staff meeting that morning  but we came back that very afternoon when all was done. We had to go again on New Year’s Day as the students were reporting at her school and she had to be there to do the registration and what not. That was why we did not plan to cook up a storm nor with the very wet and gloomy weather, did we plan to have our New Year’s Eve anywhere outside.

In the end, we settled for a simple steamboat dinner…

…at home.

Normally, Chinese families would have this for Chap Goh Meh (the 15th Night of the new Lunar New Year) but it did not matter. For one thing, there would be minimal hassle in the preparation, unless one decides to prepare everything on one’s own . Otherwise, one would just have to go and buy all the things to throw in.

I do think that having a steamboat is kind of symbolic – the nice things being thrown in would signify the showers of good things that would raining into one’s life in the coming year and the fact that everyone would be doing it together would tighten the family bond and the unity or togetherness between everybody involved.

Among the things that we had for our steamboat were some prawns, fish cake slices, chicken balls, green veg, mushrooms and even sweet corn on the cob…

Melissa loves those last two – mushrooms and sweet corn so I made it a point to buy those and make sure she would have them to enjoy. We also had a bit of glass noodles – Melissa likes that as well.

I did buy some Foochow fried noodles from outside…

…to eat with the steamboat but there was too much for the three of us so the noodles were almost untouched. Well, it did not really matter as I heated them up the next morning when I got up before the break of dawn so we could have them for breakfast prior to leaving the house to go to Selangau again.

We did not finish everything in the steamboat either so I saved that as well and the following morning, I heated it up and served it with mee kua (dried egg noodles) for breakfast…

I must say that it was really very delicious as the soup was so tasty since all the flavours from the ingredients had gone into it. I certainly enjoyed that, I really did!

So that was all there was to my New Year – not very happening as you can see…especially with school reopening and Melissa would only be home weekends after that, I guess we were not in the best of moods at the time. Still, it was good enough, no complaint…and we certainly look forward to a great year ahead, God willing.