The cny ...

Nothing beats this really ...
Let me count the ways that make this period so this period
Of cny being so cny...

Mad rush for hometowns, as do mad rush weeks prior to acquiring new clothes, new household items, new everything...
The ritualistic need of shopping for drinks.. Packets and cans, beers, at volumes deemed unnecessary bordering on ridiculous on any other days of the year..
Hot afternoons ... Where the living room ceiling fans would be turned off to facilitate prayer sessions and the fuming joss sticks as they burn the room choky and eyes quivering ...
The tv ... How all programs would be automatically attuned with Hong Kong styled award shows, annual celebration shows (from years past) .. How each show would be peppered before, after and in between with the local team of artistes belting out this year's themed cny songs.. Of a bunch of nearly there and barely there artistes rocking and swaying to cheesy choreographs ...
The season is amply pumped up too with the must-do rituals of small time gambling among friends and colleagues. and as the majority of us go into slacking mode and just enjoy the feasts and serenity of the new year, we get bombarded by enterprising fengshui masters that go the extra length at this period, promoting themselves as with their videos, all complete 12 of it offering good advice to people from all walks of the Chinese zodiacs on their brand new year's do's and dont's.
As the actual day draws near, it is almost ritualistic that we cross our fingers for an early day-off, and go around asking our acquaintances when do they "start work", as in, returning to work after the holidays end. Well, specifically, to the Chinese celebrating the spring festival, this is the lunar new year, a new beginning not unlike that which we just had on the first day of the Gregorian calendar ... So what? A second chance at redeeming ourselves with a late start to our "new year resolutions"???...
Ahem.... Perhaps but then again, this is more apt a period of rejoicing for our abundance and achievements from the past one year....
And more practically for this rooster tapping out this post, the annually longed for "break of the year". It does make me wondrous how the cny brings about effects in me that had me feeling more like a grown up more and more so as the cny looms and passes ...

Gong Heii Fatt Choi..!! ;)