Gung Hay Fat Choy

Chinese New Year at home is a huge colourful event, its the biggest celebration in the Vietnamese/ Chinese calendar. In Japan though, its a different story. The Chinese hosted a New Year Eve's meal which was a lot of fun. They all made us make our wishes and then sing songs in our various languages. On the day itself though, I wanted to have a proper dinner with everybody to mark the occassion but with Olivier in France; Emma, George and Sarah in Hokkaido; Jan in Tokyo; Ben in Hawaii, Brandon in US; Chinese Ben et al in Osaka, and all the people who have already left, in the end dinner was a small affair. Emmanuelle, Liz, Alex and I sat down together with some chicken stir fry (mine), Creole-style rice (Alex's), fruit salad (Liz's) and a bottle of wine (Emmanuelle's). It was a lovely, cosy event and food was delicious, though completely lacking in authenticity. Usually, I get a little red envelope from my mum with "lucky money"- its a tradition that adults give children money for New Year in shiny red envelopes. Instead, I got a phone call from mum wishing me Happy New Year, and a message to say that the money has been wired into my account. Modern technology, indeed!