Chinese New Year!

GONG XI FA CAI! Well, technically, the new year started yesterday on the 18th. It's the year of the fire pig, and it's supposed to be a golden pig year too. It's supposed to be super auspicious, and it only occurs every 60 or 600 years depending on which calendar you use. I read an article that said that China and Hong Kong are expecting a spike in birth... everyone wants a baby this year!

This is the first Chinese New Year's celebration away from home that was closest to the real thing. I spent the new year in San Francisco with my sister and her housemates. It was so much fun... just like family! We even cooked authentic new year's dishes, so there was a lot to eat too. We had our new year's eve "reunion" dinner and then everyone called home to wish our parents and relatives since it was already New Year's day in Malaysia.

We had a late start on New Year's day, but it was a fun day. We took a hike down to the beach at Lands End, right by Pacifica... and boy was the wind whipping! The little trail even had a mini Lombard street built into the trail down to the beach... I thought it was really funny. Everyone else was trying to protect their faces from the whipping wind and sand! We went bowling too, and it was safe to say that I sucked real bad! We went back to my sister's place after that, cooked a late dinner, and then played a really cutthroat game of Monopoly... I bowed out early. We ended up going to bed at around 2.30 in the morning, but it was a really fun day.

We came home today in good spirits... the new year has started out great... I hope it will be a really fantastic year ahead!

Rain!

FINALLY! It rained! Well it rained on Sunday too, but it was raining really hard on my way home from Pasadena today. I have honestly never seen such heavy rain here. I felt like my windshield was going to break from the onslaught of seriously heavy rain bullets. I finally washed my car on Sunday, that's why it decided to rain on Sunday and again today, when my car is finally clean. Anthony swears the draught is my fault, because I have refused to wash my car since it always seems that it rains right after my car gets washed.

Sensory Overload...

... and now I'm exhausted! We went to Disneyland today after lounging around in the morning. We didn't get there until 2.30 in the afternoon, but just 6 hours there were enough to exhaust us. It was a heck of a lot of fun. I don't know when I've ever been miserable at Disneyland... I am always excited and happy to be there. Even waiting in line to buy tickets (the second of many lines... we had to first get our bags checked), I got excited when they started playing Disney music over the loudspeakers. We decided to get annual passes since we would only need to go 2 more times to make the passes more than pay for itself.

Since we decided to get passes, we didn't feel the need to go get on all the rides we wanted to. We actually took our time walking around and just going on rides we really wanted to. The no-pressure approach was so much better than having to go around to all the rides to make the ticket worthwhile. We could actually just stroll around leisurely instead of rushing like made people going from ride to ride.

This was the first time we went to the Buzz Lightyear ride... and boy did we have a blast!! We want to go again. We didn't know they would take pictures of us during the ride, so we weren't prepared... but it was still a whole heck of a lot of fun. Disneyland did not disappoint us!

Traffic

I swear traffic has gotten so much worse on the I-10 in the past week! No matter what time I leave, there are so many more cars and trucks on the road this week. Even my office-mate (who takes the same freeway to work), has noted the same thing. Where did all these extra commuters come from? To make matters worse, they are doing road construction on the pass I take to get out of the valley. That's added another 15-20 minutes to my drive. Why couldn't they do the construction at night? I need to be more patient...

A New Month!

It's February and it looks like the weird funk I was in has past... or at least I hope. I have been really motivated this week, and I have gotten a lot accomplished at work the past few days. I'm amazed. Maybe it was the change in scenery... I moved offices on Friday. Maybe it's a fresh start... hmm. Chinese New Year is just around the corner, so maybe it's time for a second new year :)

January was just very very weird. I noticed a lot of unrest and unhappiness. I wonder why. At least it's over, and we're closer to getting warm again when spring comes and warms us up from the winter chill.