Chinese New Year celebration in London 2013

Chinese New Year this year was different. I actually doesn't dislike it. Call me abandoning my own culture, call me unappreciative. But I never like the noise and the symbolic-ness of red. Red is good and black is bad? Its just a colour and I like black. Also, Chinese New Year just ain't my cup of tea. =)

This year was different, I had a "reunion dinner" with my cousin and I invited my friend to join the fun. She had never seen a Chinese New Year celebration before so I thought it would be nice for her to experience it. We decided to have Korean in oppose of the usual Chinese food that we always have during CNY eve.

We had BBQ, dukbhoki and bibimbap. As the name suggest, Korean food has a reputation of being spicy, like many other cuisine. And my friend can't really have spicy food. But kudos to her, she tried it anyway.


And gifts kept coming in. My mother sent me some bak kwa all the way from Malaysia. I received an ang pao from a very sweet aunt that understood my lonely feeling of being abroad during festive time. Even though I love the fact that I am away from all the craziness. I appreciate the thought greatly.

My former colleagues and good friends sent me CNY cards and I used them to spruce up the place, make it more CNY-ly. Like what my friend once said, no celebrations are better than good companies. Even though I don't get your companies personally, I am glad there are little somethings that kept me company all the time.

Reunion Dinner....Korean Barbeque and a whole table of food.

Friend that I invited to join in the CNY fun.

The next day, I endure the pack underground and took a trip to Chinatown, London. I wanted to experience the difference in celebration. I mean, this is London, even CNY should be grand and huge. But.....I have to say I am slightly disappointed but a lot people seemed to have a great time watching the  Lion dance though.

I only took a few pictures of the Lion Dance because I felt bad for hogging a place. I had seen this more times than I could count and Lion Dance isn't my thing. I took a few quick pictures and gave other people opportunity to be entertained by it instead.

Crazy expensive durian.

It snowed on CNY. Just made my day

And this comes a few days after first day of CNY with a very cute hair piece, just in time for Valentine's day. Come back in a few days, I will post my Valentine's day post and find out who I spent it with and what London had for Valentine's day. Yes, London has celebration for everything. Gotta love London!!! There is still 7 days left for CNY. So, Happy CNY. Btw, when is 七夕情人节？(Chinese Valentine's day)

Probably the most inappropriate thing I had to say

This is a wordy post, skip if you like only pictures. Apparently Nuffnang ads didn't work on Microsoft platform, it works well on my computer though, I will try to get it fix.

Wednesday is the most tiring day in my week. I have classes from 9 to 9 with 2 breaks in between. I had my fair share of working from 8 to 10pm but you know when you are sitting there listening. Its just not the same. Absorbing info are much much tiring. Hahaha. Anyway on the side note. I have 2 things to share.

First and foremost, this is probably the most inappropriate thing i have to say and I would just say it once, at least officially. I can never stop gushing it to my friends. My teaching assistants are hot! Who knew the field of academia can be hot. When i say hot, i meant hunky-abit muscular-with a bit of facial hair kind of hot. Exactly my kind of hot. Hahahaha. Really, everything is modernised nowadays. Gone are the days that lecturers are middle age man that looks like Einstein because they are just too smart to bother and they wear jumpers all the time.

My lecturer dressed smartly, suits, waistcoat and all. Partly because he was working in addition to his teaching job. Also partly because he is so young. My friend's first impression of him is "wow, our lecturer has muscles!" Lol. I won't post any pictures due to very obvious reasons but i could show u if you want to, as i really thing this is really inappropriate. :)

Back to teaching assistants, most of them, i dare say 9.5 out of 10 are italians. I had 2 teaching assistants last semester. Italians. I have more than 2 teaching assistants because they teach different topics in the same subject, all italians. :) but i am not complaining, they are cute. That makes the subject interesting. Well partly anyway. Yes their pictures are available online too. :)

The second thing I wanted to put into writing is how much respect I have for some people. Despite on what they went through, they are still so strong. I used to think that I would paddle through sticky circumstances like this, but on a second thought, I would have thought of many ways not to. I just am not that strong that I would want myself to think. To put things into perspective, I think this is my second resolution this year, try not to be influenced by people THAT easily. What I do now is to avoid these people at all cost. My principal is "don't ask, don't tell" and "I'd rather be ignorant than knowing the painful truth" as well as "Ignorant is bliss". Of course, these works till a certain extent.

So, right now, I would gradually teach myself to take in negative feedback or "bad news" (not necessarily bad but things that would get me upset when I heard/know about it).

Besides these, I would like to wish all my friends Happy Chinese New Year, no matter where you are!! I received bak gua from my mother and decided that its too precious to share with my cousin. =p And we decided to have dinner in Chinatown on the eve, so good luck to us finding a place as well as squeezing through mountains and sea of humans. Hahaha. Anyway, Happy Chinese New Year! I don't care about chinese superstition, this is MY year - the year of SNAKE, trust me year of dragon are overhype, I grew up among them (hehe, sorry Eugene) and most importantly, I WILL RULE THIS YEAR!

Ok, I have to go pay attention on my teaching assistant now. =)