Tinker, Tailor

I was at a bus stop along Little India when I saw this.

Don’t ask me what they’re doing. You just have to look closely.

Those read this blog or know me well enough would know that I’m no fan of Chinese New Year.

I even wrote 3 years ago 10 Reasons to hate Chinese New Year.

My first reason in that post is

1. CNY music sounds horrible. It’s playing everywhere, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And imagine - as long as you’re in this region, you’re gonna have to listen to that stuff every year for the rest of your pathetic life.

Unfortunately, it’s gonna be that way forever. CNY music is meant to be noisy and annoying, to scare away the mythical Nian monster.

(I wonder if the Nian monster has anything relationship with Santa Claus. But that’s another story.)

What’s quite different this particular CNY are those friggin’ annoying ‘niu’ and ox-asperating puns that have been going around. wtf.

For those of you who will be interacting with long-lost relatives who mysteriously appear out of the woodwork this time of the year every year, don’t forget some 10 ways to get the when-are-you-getting-married relative to shut up.

As for me, you’ll know what I’ll be doing on CNY.

p.s. notice that all the gongxifacais last year and the red for luck and mandarin oranges for gold didn’t seem to work for most people? Face it - all the well wishes on CNY won’t make an iota of difference.

Seems like most bloggers don’t seem to be interested in joining the Association of Bloggers (Singapore). Some are even ridiculing them.

Come on, they haven’t even gotten started - we should give them a chance!

10 reasons why I’m joining the Association of Bloggers (Singapore):

1. It is led by a heroic woman who will fight for what is right (using a chopper).

2. You don’t want to be left out because she also has a large network of contacts.

3. They have a lot of credibility because they are now a legal entity and endorsed by big names in the Singapore blogosphere.

4. You get to learn how to be professional - without the flaming and constant bitching wars among bloggers.

5. There are no cliques or in groups - ALL Singapore bloggers are welcome!!! (Please wait for the invite and approval by the Council.)

6. You won’t be like loose sand anymore. You can finally stand up against the foreign tyrant!

10. The $110 fee for the first is very cheap. Really! Come on, you think everything can be free, like blogspot?

I’ve been quite busy with work these days, but that doesn’t mean that random thoughts don’t appear every now and then. Like this one about funeral foods…

Anyone who’s been to a void deck Chinese funeral wake here in Singapore would know that they always serve sweets.

The sweets are obviously for kids. It helps to shut them up, which is usually a good idea during a funeral.

Then you have groundnuts, which are great if you’re not allergic. When you’re sitting at the table trying to make conversation, awkward moments of silence are easily camouflaged by focusing on the task of cracking the groundnut husk.

Except that if you’re there at the funeral wake for a long period, you need something that needs more time and effort to crack, and takes a lot more time to fill you up.

This is why the perfect funeral food is the sunflower seed.

(Photo by flickrich.)

p.s. this is such an inane post that I almost didn’t want to publish it!

For some reason, the transition from Xmas ‘08 to New Year ‘09 to Chinese New Year ‘09 seems especially fast this time.

I even have friends asking me what I’m doing on the coming CNY already.

It gets a bit annoying especially when the friend knows very well that I don’t celebrate Xmas, NY, or CNY.

Friend: so what do you do on cny?

Me: same as what i do on deepavali

Friend: LOL