It was the Lunar New Year on Saturday. It’s the “year of the dragon”, which means my brother turns 60 and a couple of my uncles turn 72. A few of my cousins turn either 36 or 48 (probably more 36 than 48), but there lies the best part of the Chinese zodiac – it’s utilitarian feature of letting one know how old one is, almost instantaneously…
It’s not often we get a LNY falling on a Saturday or Sunday, so when it does, we make the most of it. Melbourne has more and more Chinese calling it home now, but it hasn’t quite reached a level where the LNY is a public holiday. So when it falls on a weekday, we don’t do anything.
Other than having it fall on a Saturday, this year also saw Nicole, my niece, settling in Melbourne so Tress and I made an occasion of it and invited her, Ruth and family and a few of Nic’s colleagues and friends over. Tress and I cooked on Saturday, and served a few classic LNY dishes – a braised pork and mushroom dish, which we adorned with some abalones, a whole fish, a soup and a side dish of veg, along with a couple of store bought dishes (a roast duck and a salt baked chook). All in, it was quite a feast and when the guests have all left, Tress and I spent a fair bit of time packing away the leftovers for our lunches this week. This, after those colleagues of Nic’s have packed some to go too. They’re all young single adults who work long hours (they’re all doctors) so home cooked food is always welcomed, I suppose. Ruth, Jon and Micah trekked from Woodend and only left close to 10pm, which meant they only got home close to midnight, so that was an effort to catch up, which I appreciated very much. It is always good to see them.
Tress and I stayed up late that night, as we cleaned and tidied the house, putting away the numerous loads of dishes etc., and battled with the dishwasher – the 16+ year old moaning machine that is increasingly temperamental. We went to bed way past midnight and with it being a warm night, we also had some mozzies for company, which made it a restless one.
On Sunday at St Alf’s we said farewell to Ross, the children and family minister. He had been on staff for 9 years and has done a wonderful job and it was a very emotional goodbye. It was a hot day, and we came home for some leftover foods (thus continuing another LNY tradition) before Tress went and visited an ex-colleague of hers at the Peter James rehab centre down the road from our home. Kym had been unwell since Nov last year but Tress only found out about a week ago, and she’d been to see her a couple of times. It sounded like Kym’s kids appreciated that very much, as they only lost their dad not too long ago and to have their mum now succumb to a serious illness is such a terrible blow to these young folks.
We went to bed relatively early, having turned on the air conditioning to deal with another warm night. Summer is in its last rounds but the heat appears to be just cranking up. It’d be 37 deg today and will be in the high 30’s tomorrow as well. Thankfully, I slept like a baby last night… hopefully the “year of the dragon” wouldn’t be too restless…
Ante 