what i dislike about celebrating the new year

the worst part of celebrating the chinese new year is visting my relatives. in the past, my family visited about 8-9 families in a single day but we stopped visiting them when they all started to drop dead. now there are only about 4 families we visit but they all arent that great.

1. 7th grandaunt (CMG)

well dont get me wrong, she aint mean or anything; in fact she is really really nice. she would always greet my family with bak gua and other goodies which were, frankly, not really tasty but good enough to keep my mouth busy for an hour or 2. well the bad thing is that she is one hell of a Cantonese machine gun. for that 1/2 hours she would rant, in Cantonese, about how her youngest son spent his 42 thousand dollars worth of bonus, how her eldest son gambled his family and house away, how much she put into her fixed deposit, how the other uncles treated her sister... ... and the list goes on and on and on until i have to give my father the "full-time" signal. the full-time signal was developed many years ago to cut my stay at my 7th grand aunt's house short. the full time signal is used when we cross the 45 min mark. but despite the signal, we can only leave 30 mins later. just when its you think its over, my 7th grand aunt brings her sons for another visit at my house... this time its for 5 freaking hours. during then, i cant do anything cause they call the shots.

2. pau witch

actually i dont really know how she is related to me but all i know is that she makes paus, siew mai and all the other dim sums when we visit her. the reason why she is called the pau witch but not the dim sum princess its because once when i was about 10 years old, she made a batch of paus that gave my ENTIRE family a really bad case of diarrhea. since then we became very apprehensive when she offered us one of her handmade dishes and only ate things that come in the transparent containers with red screw caps.

3. Jurassic Park aunty

this aunty has screws in her knees because of a bad fall. shes really looks like a cantonese , liver spotted prune on a wheel chair: she is really ancient. but SHE IS NOT THE ONE who made the whole visit bad. the really bad part of this visit is that her grandchildren ALWAYS entertains their guests with a Jurassic Park VCD, for 3 straight years. they were probably thinking: hey what should we let them watch this year? oh jurassic park is a timeless movie, i love it. maybe they will not notice if play a different scene this year. well this family aint all that bad cause when my cousins come with their daughters, i have something else to watch other than the scene where the characters run from the t-rex in the hotel kitchen. well my cousin married a filipino who gave birth to 2 really pretty daughters; the younger daughter is the prettier of the 2.

4. all the rest of the uncles from my father side

i have 3 more uncles on my father side but they gather at the PSA building restaurant every year so we can avoid visiting them one by one. this side is probably the most problematic side cause i have a divorced uncle and aunty, a aunty who married a china man, a very hairy uncle who is the head chef at some high class restaurant, an uncle who is always worried about his son's education prospects. they are quite a torture but thankfully the love to gather at a table to rant in cantonese. their little brats are really like the devil's children. one phrase to describe them all : fat, fatter fatterer. god i hate this bastards, always running about(while their c cup moobs bounce around) but when the roasted pork dish comes, they will be 1st to gobble it down. and according to my over worried uncle, i am the eldest of them all and so i should be looking after them at all times. and that was how i always missed the other dishes because i had to watch over them while they paint the town red. even though they all return to the table when the roasted pork dish comes, it aint any better since my arm wasnt large enough to shove their chopsticks-clutching-trotters away when they come snatching for food. so at the end of the day i am still hungry and exhausted.

despite the many red packets, chinese new year aint a joyous occasion for me.