Christmas and New Year 2017

It has been feasting and more feasting for the past two weeks! Family, friends, colleagues - I think I've not had so much year-end celebrations before. I'd planned to use my Christmas leave for spring cleaning and 'healthy' living but in the end I only managed to clock in 1 session for both. Not really productive in the sense of goal-hitting.

Well, another session is coming up this week and I've prepared small goodies as belated Christmas gifts. Just an idea for gift-wrapping - I love Christmas colours!

Christmas goodie bags with the last of my ribbons

The feasting started with a mini gathering of the HCBs, the office Christmas and inter-department year-end celebrations, Chinese Winter Solstice festival and our late "Kong Kong" death anniversary - all consecutively. And then the celebrations continued with Christmas eve and day family reunions with the Ws and Ls, concall with the Ps for Grandma's birthday, ex-cell group Christmas party. And when I went back to work for the last 2 days of the year, we had department lunch and year-end closing lunch at Yoke Heng in Seri Kembangan - I didn't know I'd be eating at the same place for 2 days straight, with some overlapping dishes as well! Only the company varied. Anyway, the food was good - especially the claypot lou shu fun (I usually never eat this stuff, but this was yums!) and marmite pork ribs (again, I usually don't like ribs, but this was yummy!).

And then it was countdown time - some supper and drinks with friends. I confidently made my friends walk a block or so to a 24-hour cafe but when we arrived there, we discovered it had closed down and a pet shop was in its place! That was sad, I remember eating there late at night especially after events and I'd order the lau sar pau from their dimsum menu. Now I guess we need to find another haunt.

First meal for 2017, we went to Lai Ching Yuen in Grand Millennium for dimsum with the Ls. The thing about dimsum is it looks like a 'little bit of everything' but in the end, you get so full fast! We had the usual stuffs - har kau, siew mai, loh mai kai, lobak kou, chee cheong fun, wu kok, some fried prawn that looks like a birds nest, prawn in fried fu chuk (pictured below), steamed pork in fu chuk, char siew pau, egg tarts and siew yoke. Driving in KL was terrible, even in non-rush hour.

Dimsum in Grand Millennium

Of course, we would adjourn for coffee. Rekindle was full, so we went to Epicuro. I've learned my lesson from Christmas, so I played safe and ordered a scoop of ice cream - Cereal Killer *cue Psycho* theme song*. This was much better than the one I tried a few months back that had dulce de leche. It was like eating Nestum in ice cream-form - which was a happy thing.

Cereal Killer in Epicuro DU

I thought after New Year's day I'd have the opportunity to cut down on all the richness. But nope, the eating goes on - so far, what's planned is till this weekend. It has come to a point where I was secretly rejoicing that my colleague cancelled her BBQ home party at the last minute!

Through a David Pawson sermon, we were reminded that Christmas was actually a pagan festival that was celebrated (by a different name) before the event of Christ's birth. It is also not definite that Christ was born on 25th December. From the pagan practices came the Christmas trees, Santa Clause, mistletoe etc. tradition. It's true that it is a festival of excesses, where everyone goes all out to celebrate, overindulge and spend. But it is also a time where the rich gives to the poor. So this Christmas, our gifts-giving was low-keyed and more emphasis on family time.

As for New Year resolutions, again I'm not setting any definite ones but 'recommendations' which I should try to achieve.

1. Pass exams
2. Join cell group
3. More firsts
4. Road trip
5. Meaningful trip