新年快乐！

Its Chinese New Year! Its kinda my favourite time of the year, because its a time for family. Its also a time where I actually get to clean my room! And make everything nice and pretty. But ok, I am honestly a lot less superficial than that.

This CNY was spent with the usual reunion dinner at my gramps. Its always nice to see grandma, and I should really make an effort to visit at least once a month. For all the volunteer work that I do, I sure should also visit my grandma! She's getting on her years and her eyesight is not doing as well anymore. I will cherish all the time that I have and visit. What was the slightly more disappointing thing, is that reunion dinner is no longer something the extended family look towards. I still remember when I was a kid, I really looked forward to visiting my grandparents, but as we grew older, things changed.

I can't really pinpoint what happened, but I suppose a great deal had to do with 2 of my relatives having gone through a divorce, well technically one, but the other family is very dysfunctional and estranged from us. The family that has been through the divorce is still very close to our family, which is very heartening. But I suppose as we grew older, we all began to lead our own lives, and the increasingly infrequent meet-ups drifted us apart.

But its funny really, because I am much closer to my god-cousins. Maybe because our background are more similar? Or that we don't have the "burden" of being real cousins? I am not sure. I am only close to one of my real cousins. We hang out now and then, we share secrets, and just muse about life in general, and its all good. But of course there has been disappointing moments in all familial relationships, but that of course won't be shared here.

This new year, I went back to Malaysia to visit my maternal side of the family, and I must say that this is one of the best trips I've had so far. I am not really close to my maternal cousins at all, because we were brought up in very different background. But I think things are improving, we are getting closer, and my Aunt has become more sincere over the years. We even had a ton of fun at KTV, singing and drinking away. How AWESOME is that? I must say that for once, I look forward to heading back.

To end, here's a snap of me in my lovely New Year Clothes!!