Chinese New Year is around the corner! And yes, I'm delirious. If you've been following my blog long enough, you'll see that Christmas is just another holiday for me, and New Year is just like any other day. Chinese New Year? Thats a different matter altogether. I love the period.

Angpaus? Money? Not really. To be honest, I can live without the ang pau's. Not that I'm not wanting them of course, and I risk sounding a little shallow here, but who wouldn't want money? But if you were to ask me, would I celebrate CNY as much, if I wasn't given the money? I can answer you immediately, yes I would.

To me, it isn't about the money or the food, not even the new clothes we get to buy. The money is just another thing for me, and the food I can get anytime. Even new clothes, I don't exactly have to wait till CNY to buy it. But to me, CNY is a time for me to go home. Home where my grandmother lives, where my cousins and aunts and uncles will all come, and we'll all be under one roof, all 30+ of us.

Its about gathering of the family, how I get to hear my younger cousins scream with laughter as they play outside. Walking to the living room to see the adults all talking, in to the room to see my cousins all sprawled on the bed just chatting about nothing at all. Chinese New Year to me, isn't about the money or the material, but about the time spent.

Its about how our CNY dinner would need three tables to fit us all, and subsequent dinners on other days need about four cars to ferry all of us out. How ordering food is a chaos, how we're all under one roof. What money? I'm very content as long as I get laughter, love and family. That, to me, is the essence of my Chinese New Year.