My Chinese New Year of 2009

My Chinese New Year holidays have come and went – a fleeting week filled with repeated gatherings with my friends with the annual gambling added to the mix. It was when I spent my waking hours having fun nearly all the time, that when it finally drew to a close with my friends dispersing back to their university life and our own daily routines, the prospect of this fun ending ultimately made me feel a tad bit depressed.

That was all merely temporary because now I eased myself comfortably into my own routine, where everything falls back into its usual normalcy.

How I spent my Chinese New Year of 2009:

Sunday, 25th January 2009 – 除夕 – Eve of Chinese New Year

• Went to my soon-to-be new French teacher’s place at a condo near Solaris and Mont Kiara – initially we were there to merely test out the road since it was kinda far, and my parents were in doubt whether it was worth it or not. I almost decided not to go ahead with it had Daniel Kermorvant (the French teacher) not answered my call, but he did, we met up at the quiet, grand lounge of the Sutramas Condo, he told me about his methods in detail, and hell I was convinced. :) I asked him for more detailed directions and he duly gave it out – I was surprised ‘cause even me, a Malaysian, didn’t know my roads in the Klang Valley well, and this Frenchman put me to shame lol.


• We then went back to my maternal grandma’s place where we had our reunion dinner – it was a first for us because normally we would do it with my paternal grandma.


• Electricity went out for about 3 hours in the evening right up to the night, with cousins playing with those sparkles and whatnot, it did feel very kampung-ish and as if we were in the 80s or something.


• Brought my laptop along too as I had work to be done, plus for fear of boredom.

Monday, 26th January 2009 – 初一 (1st Day of Chinese New Year)

• Paternal grandma and uncle and family came down for lunch – have not seen my grandma for a year.


• Parents then followed them out to Seremban.


• At night, Ding, Wai Hong, and Heng came to my house at the pretext of wanting to gamble and while waiting for Shawn (WH and Heng brought oranges, something I’m not used to doing), and right when Ding arrived, Shawn phoned Heng telling him that he was home wtf.


• Heng went off first to pick up Jess, and after finishing transferring some files to WH’s external hard drive, the three of us went to Shawn’s house to gamble, where I lost RM11 in a game of Blackjack.

Tuesday, 27th January 2009 – 初二 (2nd Day of Chinese New Year)

• Parents were out to maternal grandma’s place, and since I’ve already done my visiting there, I decided not to go.


• Went to Shawn’s place where Heng was there, gambled. Shawn and Yen were cooking up something for the latter’s friends who were coming later that night, and after finishing a few menial tasks like Heng feeding Xin Min’s dogs and watering her plants and Shawn feeding RB’s dogs, we went down to Old Klang Road in Heng’s RAV4 to pick Esther up.


• Ate a very late dinner that night at Shawn’s house at around 10pm – like Shawn’s extremely salty French fries and an extremely spicy otak-otak wtf. Shawn’s attempt at reheating one of the Domino’s pizzas resulted in a distasteful black when he left in the oven for too long.. Ding came too and we gambled again, where I lost a further RM12.

Wednesday, 28th January 2009 – 初三 (3rd Day of Chinese New Year)

Jessica’s parents threw a party for her, to mainly celebrate her 21st birthday which falls in March, which is also when she wouldn’t be in Subang.

XM, Jess, Ding. I tumpang-ed Shawn’s car, who was also fetching Heng, Xin Min, and Esther too – then on the way to Jess’ house, we spotted Ding and Sarah in the former’s car, who then followed us there.

Ding, Sarah, Esther. We were waiting for WH to come before we commenced eating – lots of absolutely delicious stuffs like spaghetti, fried wan tan, Domino’s pizza, fried rice, etc.

Jess and Ding acting cute wtf.

A group photo of sorts! I really like this pic for some reason.. we were playing Blackjack.

Jess’ house turned into a gambling parlour wtf.

Learning to ‘zhut pai’ hahahaha.

You can clearly see the delivery man outside haha, as Jess’ mum ordered more pizzas ‘cause they weren’t enough.

A section of the wall turned into a cute collection of family photos – half of which was of Alex wtf.

Another favourite pic of mine – it’s been a while since we had snapped any pics together.

Exactly 21 candles to be blown.

Another group pic of the u8 gang. (Justine is an excellent photographer, because if she was noob, this pic would be blur wtf.)

And the Seafield gang.

While WH and I were talking to each other and eating the birthday cake, Shawn and co rushed to the kitchen where Jess was and smashed her up nicely with said cake. Apparently the cake got into her nose too wtf.

Jess went on to grab hold of several perpetrators like Esther and Ding and returned the favour hahahaha – Esther had it worse ‘cause she didn’t really run away and her top was white.

Jess-with-cake.

Jess attempting to assault Heng.

The calm after the storm wtf. Jess went on to shower while Esther changed into Shawn’s oversized clothes (and later into Jess’ 3K run top).

Unwrapping presents.

I thought Jess’ expression looked funny here so I had to put this up.

And another hahahaha. (Look normally reserved when hearing a ridiculous story or looking at said ridiculous story in the face hahahahahaha.)

And another HAHAHAHA.

My hair was just very very ugly – will never return to the Court 2 salon again.

Seafield gang looking at my gift for Jess – a coffee table book of sorts with pics of Jess, me, and the u8 gang. Still can’t believe I wrote Bali instead of Phuket, and I still wouldn’t have realised that mistake had Justine not asked me about it. Can’t make any corrections to it ‘cause it was printed. >:(

Ahemahemcoughnod.

I just realised XM might be posing for my camera wtf.

Esther was using the hair straightener or whatever it is on Jess.

Thought the lighting here looked cool.

Another funny expression.

Laughing at something.

Jess’ dad, her two uncles, and Shawn were engaging in an intense game of gin rummy.

A different look of the party on ultra wide angle.

Oh and Andy arrived pretty late, from Penang.

Esther est moi.

This pic was snapped right before the three of us left for Shawn’s house while it was raining somewhat heavily – the rest had already left before we congregated once again at Shawn’s place for further gambling. This time around though there were two tables, one with me, WH, Andy, and Shawn were playing gin rummy (as Shawn were teaching me and WH at that time, and later on Shawn’s mum came to gamble with us) while the other table with the rest of the gang was involved in Blackjack and In Between.

Didn’t get to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button from the DVD that I’ve burned as planned.

Thursday, 29th January 2009 – 初四 (4th Day of Chinese New Year)
At about 11.30pm reached Shawn’s place where Andy was already there, along with Uncle Chua, his wife and his daughter. We played gin rummy with Shawn’s dad, Auntie Chua, and Elaine (sp?), then Shawn’s mum replaced Shawn’s dad. I merely won the first few rounds before continuing to lose till the end. :/

Friday, 30th January 2009 – 初五 (5th Day of Chinese New Year)
Played badminton in the evening with Jon, WH, and Shawn, with RB coming in to play with us for an hour before he left (also spotted Mei Yee there). That was my first time at the USJ 23 badminton court which charges RM15/hour.

Saturday, 31st January 2009 – 初六 (6th Day of Chinese New Year)
Esther came to my house after I invited her over to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Save Me with me – it was going to be a movie marathon night for the both of us, ‘cause sigh everyone else was busy or not in, plus my parents were out.

We went out first to McD’s Taipan to buy our dinner, then I teman-ed her to buy a quartz of ice-cream for her boyfriend and a pint for herself.

Save Me was a little lost on us (for me especially, I felt, ‘cause for some reason I always had trouble listening and understanding people when they speak wtf, especially if there is any obstruction or external noise that may drown what they say), ‘cause the audio was pretty garbled, perhaps due to the horrible speakers of my TV. :/ It was alright.. too bad it didn’t have subtitles.

We then proceeded to watch the first 10 minutes of Ben Button before WH rang me up and told me that he was coming my house to pick me up now, and I was like 0_o. Turned out that Ding phoned him and asked him to pick me up, as they were all going to Shawn’s.. so we all went.

As usual, we gambled – with me and WH playing mostly gin rummy, then in the end when everyone else had left save for me and WH, together with Shawn, we watched Ben Button till the end, a staggering 2 hours 45 minutes. It was an interesting watch, but again for some odd reason I had trouble understanding what was being said (no subtitles again) – could be the New Orleans accent, but then again I doubt that. :/

We only went back at about 4am.

Sunday, 1st February 2009 – 初七 (7th Day of Chinese New Year)
Moped around house feeling a little depressed – also probably magnified by the previous night’s viewing of Ben Button.

Eventually I chatted with Yen on MSN and found out that Andy and RB were at her house, so after a while I walked over (parents and bro were all out on both cars, leaving me irrevocably alone at home). Andy had already left by then (Shawn fetched him to wherever he was going to), while RB stayed only till about 7pm. Played gin rummy yet again with Shawn’s mum, Auntie Chua, and Elaine.

For dinner, we had porridge – plain porridge with salty eggs and random kampung ingredients I don’t know the name of. Ding arrived right when I plopped a durian into my mouth (not the entire fruit, ‘course), but then after a while he decided to go back ‘cause we weren’t doing anything else, plus it didn’t seem like Andy was returning anytime soon, so I followed Ding’s car back at nearly 11pm.

Monday, 2nd February 2009 – 初八 (8th Day of Chinese New Year)
I went right to my daily routine, and I felt strangely at home.

Tuesday, 3rd February 2009 – 初九 (9th Day of Chinese New Year)
My usual routine was classes from 8am till 6pm, then this time around I had dinner with Kean Gin at McD’s SS15 drive-through, before he dropped me off at the road opposite ICLS SS15 at about 6.40pm, when the rain had just let up.

Our progress as usual was intensely slow because what I thought that a single ‘chapter’ can be completed in 1 class, he did it in 2 or even 3. -___- After which he also began telling the Chinese girl (from China) in our class about the horrible conditions of our public transport and Malaysian politics (interestingly she also told us that when she first came here, she was very shocked to see so little people around compared to her hometown, and that Malaysian buses are worse than the ones in China).

Wednesday, 4th February 2009 – 初十 (10th Day of Chinese New Year)
Brought my laptop to college to while the time away during break, had a bit of a problem at first when I couldn’t connect to my college’s WiFi, even the tech dude at the Server Room (not Ronnie) wasn’t able to solved it until I tested out a few things on my own.

Parents came to pick me up from college at about 2.30pm, then we went over to the Bali building on the pretext of doing the Langkawi apartment booking for Ding, but when we got there, we saw two fire engines rushing in with the police patrol cars driving incredibly recklessly right into the compound of the building – that explains the seemingly tons of people that seemed to be on the streets when we realised that there was a fire and they were being evacuated. -___-

Then I was dropped off at iCube where I cut my hair there, and even the hairdresser expressed shock over how ugly my hair was and he asked where I cut my hair the previous time lmao. I showed him the hairstyle of one of my classmates’ which I kinda liked, and my hair stylist did a pretty good job over it. :) As I walked towards the direction of my home, I saw Fitri coming out from Court 7 on his motorbike, and we chatted for a bit before he gave me a lift back home. Good ol’ Fit – he told me that he was going to look for Joe whom he hadn’t been seeing for some time too.

So my first French class with Daniel Kermorvant began at night at 8pm, and it probably took me about 50 minutes to reach there via NKVE highway, exiting at the Jalan Duta toll (if that girl in my ICLS French class came all the way Seremban, surely I shouldn’t be complaining anything to attend an even superior class!). I forgot to ask Daniel for his unit number beforehand, and had to make repeated calls before he finally answered it. The condo pretty much amazed me ‘cause the security was exceedingly tight – had to register my name (duh), and no one can simply waltz in past the guard house, the guards had to wave a certain card probably with a microchip in it before we could get past a small gate, and into the lobby. I was also given a visitor’s card with said microchip, and had to flash it to get past the glass doors that lead to the elevators, with also another set of glass doors leading to the swimming pool.

I had to figure out why the escalator was merely going up a single floor and stopped there and not straight to the 8th floor where Daniel was staying, and realised that I didn’t flash my card again in the escalator. -___- Had to retreat towards downstairs again to pick up my pencil box from the car which I forgot to bring up.

My first French class was absolutely fantastic – his materials, of which he designed all by himself, was simply top-notch and would allow beginners like us to speak the language quickly. I know this sounds all very vague but I don’t know how to show you guys the materials and his methods (which ranged from CDs, custom software, and a pretty handy manual), you just have to see it to believe it.. which made me regret taking up French at ICLS ‘cause I was really wasting my time + money there (Daniel’s class was only about RM4/hour more expensive than ICLS’s.. I know if you add in the total amount of hours it would be rake up quite a bit) – I wanted to be somewhat fluent in basic French before I eventually backpack to Europe in 2010. In Daniel’s words, what we would normally learn from other teachers/centres in a year, we would only need 5 months with him – sounds totally up my alley! We would also only require 42 hours of lessons with him before we could sit for the DELF A1 French exam, an internationally recognised test similar to English’s TOEFL – he was also confident that we would pass it as all of his previous students passed.

Ah, and my classmates.. I was the only guy there in our class of 6 students. >_> Two of them were exceedingly hot, 1 of them is a UTAR student my age and has a boyfriend, and the other, Leslie, is 29 years old (if I get the French number correctly wtf) and was incredibly friendly, charming, and generous with her wide smiles (not sure as to her relationship status wtf). Another student is currently 30+, has two kids, and um, not sure if she used the wrong word/phrase or what (we were introducing ourselves in French) but she told us that she has a boyfriend.. which could only mean that she isn’t married. There’s another Malay girl with pretty good English and her friend, who looked like someone of a different nationality or perhaps an Indian Muslim – actually pretty much the rest of my classmates looked darned rich or from the upper stratum of society or something lol.

Our class ended at about 10.40pm as opposed to 10pm, and interestingly, one of our homework was to e-mail him a few sentences of an introduction of ourselves in French – where he would then correct it. 0_o The class was conducted via his laptop, which would then be projected on a separate monitor (he held it in his living hall on two large tables joined together), and as there wasn’t a whiteboard, he would type them all out (including our list of homework to be done).. and then e-mail it to us. O_O Talk about learning using technology – he told us that he would be typing all the necessary things out for us so we could concentrate on his class and not write/listen/talk at the same, though some girls were smirking at this, and I commented that women could definitely multi-task wtf.

Daniel also had a very thick French accent when speaking English which made me unable to understand him sometimes, plus I also found it quite amusing to hear when he pronounced words like ‘important’ the French way. :)

Thursday, 5th February 2009 – 初十一 (11th Day of Chinese New Year)
Received Maoxiong’s reply today via e-mail (he actually e-mailed to me yesterday, but I only replied to him today). :D If you didn’t read my previous entries, he was the Chinese dude I met in a Hong Kong park, and he apologised to me for the late reply (I was initially a bit disappointed that this could be another hi-bye occurrence of when I meet other travellers, thanks for proving that wrong), saying that the Chinese New Year and visiting relatives made him very busy.

Now I have a Chinese acquaintance/penpal of sorts to practise my Chinese on :D as well as able to get to know interesting insights of an ordinary Chinese youth and his firsthand account of living in China, although I’ve been asking Kai Tzin to correct my horrid e-mail splattered with various grammatical errors and poor word choice.

I’m also incredibly excited about the release of Google Latitude (saw it first through Su Ann’s plurk), probably one of the best ways to connect with your friends, although the thought of diminishing privacy (settings can be adjusted accordingly, ‘course) could be a little scary.. The mobile version has yet to be supported in Malaysia.