Happy (Chinese) New Year

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It’s the first day of Chinese New Year today. So, 恭禧發財 kung hei fat choi -  happy new year!

As we’re only a quarter Chinese between us, Mr C and I don’t really do much to celebrate Chinese New Year, although we had a Chinese take-away for dinner tonight! We spoke to Mr C’s family in Malaysia yesterday, including his Chinese grandma, who was using Skype for the first time. It was nice to be able to see her via the wonders of the Internet, even though we couldn’t see her in person. Fortunately, Mr C’s mum didn’t make us sing the Gong Xi song (I quite like the klezmer feel to this version!) over Skype!

Last year, we were in Malaysia, so we did a bit more celebrating, mainly by eating lovely food and watching lion dances, which is a traditional thing to do at new year. Lots of shops, shopping malls and hotels in Malaysia host lion dances, as they’re supposed to bring good fortune to the business. Here are some pictures from last year’s CNY:

Last year was the year of the rabbit - there were lots of rabbits everywhere, including some rather large ones outside the Central Market in Kuala Lumpur.

The lions get ready to go into the Central Market, Kuala Lumpur

A lion dance in one of the shopping malls. This one was particularly acrobatic and impressive as the lions were dancing on little platforms.

Lion dances are often very loud - lots of crashing cymbals and ringing of loud bells.

Decorations in the shopping mall (of which there are many in Kuala Lumpur)

The lions go round the crowd giving out oranges, for good luck.

It's traditional to have a crysanthamum plant in the house at Chinese New Year.

Shorter fingerless gloves

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After making a few pairs of the fairly long fingerless gloves, I decided to make some using the same pattern, but just making a 3″ ‘sleeve’ bit instead of a 6″ one. I was supposed to be making them for my sisters-in-law, but unfortunately I only finished one pair before Christmas. I managed to wrap these up and take them with me to my parents’ house, but then forgot to take them round to my sister-in-law when we went to visit them! So now I’m thinking about giving them to someone else for a birthday present (my sister-in-law doesn’t know about them). Anyway, here they are. They turned out OK, although I still worry that my seams are never sewn tightly enough.

La, la, la, croak

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It’s choir time again, but I haven’t gone to choir practice tonight, and I didn’t go to Other Choir practice last night, either, because I have some sort of virus. It’s like a cold, but it only seems to be affecting my throat. I feel (and sound) a bit croaky, so it’s a bit difficult to sing. There is also an annoying cough to go with the croakyness. I’m only feeling slightly off-colour, but off-colour enough to miss a colleague’s sort-of-leaving do. She’s going on secondment, so we’ll still see her, although we’ll miss not having her around the library for the next 18 months.

Last week at choir we started practising a Les Misérables medley. I’ve never seen Les Misérables, or heard many of the songs all the way through, and I only know some of the tunes of the songs from having to play a (different) Les Misérables medley in an orchestra. I think I was playing the bass guitar at the time (a long time ago). The men of the choir requested this piece of music because (I suspect) they now have the chance to belt out ‘Do You Hear the People Sing‘ at full volume on a regular basis.

In Other Choir, we’ve started rehearsing The Armed Man. I’ve been listening to it a lot, to try and get at least some of it in my head. Some of it’s quite repetitive, which is good from the point of view of having to learn it. I think it’s growing on me, which is just as well really, as I’ll probably have to listen to it and sing it lots of times for the next couple of months.

At work, I’m continuing to catalogue the hundreds of music scores. Six large boxes of them arrived on Monday. I wonder how long it’s going to take me to finish them all…

 

Garden notes: Raspberries!

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Some friends of ours came to help us with the garden on Thursday. The back bit of it had been in a bit of a state for a while, especially since the lovely lavetera died after last year’s  cold winter.

The lavatera before its untimely demise

They (with Mr C assisting) took out all the dead plant, and loads of bindweed that had been growing over it, dug over the soil, added some fresh compost and planted some autumn-fruiting raspberry canes.

They might not look like much now, but hopefully these strange stick-like things (on the right) will produce some tasty fruit.

I’m quite excited about growing our own raspberries – hopefully I might be able to use home-grown raspberries in some cakes one day…or just eat them fresh! Yum.