CNY Must Have 001 : Yu Sang

Chinese New Year is just around the corner. - Jan 29, 06 to be exact. The chinese will have a 15 days celebration from then on, till the last day, known as Yun Siew in Cantonese or Chap Goh Mei in Hokkien. Other CNY milestone includes the New Year Eve's dinner, New Year Eve's Money God Welcome, the 7th Day People's Day for the Cantonese, and the 9th Day Heaven's Emperor's Day for the Hokkien. That's all i remember as marked days for celebration growing up in Malaysia.

Last night, we went to the place Salsa for some Malaysian food and also 'Yu Sang'!!! I haven't had yu sang since 2002. It's a dish unique to the Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore, and only served during new year. Yu sang is basically a cold salad dish, with pickled ginger, pickled papaya, sliced red chili, shredded asian pears, pamelo wedges, crunchy noodle, raw sliced fish with plum sauce and spice powder. For a recipe, click here. The dish is colorful and it brings good luck. 'Sang' rhymes with ‘grow’ in Cantonese. And the motion of stirring it up with chopsticks is ‘lou’. ‘Lou Sang’ in Cantonese means ‘prospering’. Look, we Chinese are all about the important values in life when it comes to celebrate holidays --- we pray for money, money and money.

Of course, it is a simpler version, not as elaborate as those in Malaysia, and no raw fish. But in Kansas and at $8.88, I won’t complain. It was Steve’s first yu sang experience. This is Steve’s commentary on the dish –

“yu sang - no fish, no singing, what's the deal?”

Anyway, we also found out that yu sang might just be served a little differently in Klang (or maybe it's just Tze). When the dish was served, this Klang guy started pouring the plum sauce on his own plate. The Olathe-guy followed suit and started taking crunchy noodles to his own plate too! Yeesin and I started yelling at them to stop. Needless to say, the two guys got a stern lesson from both of us on how to properly eat yu sang.

Can’t wait till Chinese New Year! Ok….. we really have no plan other than dinner with the usual gang on the 29th. What do you expect? We live in KANSAS!

OSHA 101: WHAT NOT TO DO

January 15, 2006 - January of '06 has been unseasonably warm so far. We've been eyeing this huge tree at our front yard, with branches growing in all directions like a porcupine, waiting for the right weather to take it out. Simply put, we are tired of raking leaves from that tree year after year. Also, it is an oak tree, and its seed, which are acidic, are killing the once green grass of our front lawn. So, on a fine January afternoon, Steve decided it was a good day to trim some of the lower branches. Remember, Steve is an East Asian Study (NOT engineering) major in college. Making matter worse, he just finished his MBA, which therefore rids him of any common sense he might once possessed (you know what I mean, you fellow MBAs out there!).

In this case, picture is better than a thousand words. I am wondering if OSHA will revoke my certification if they found out that I knowingly let my husband engaged in safety violations while trimming branches. Shhhh. Don't tell.

This morning, I had to manoeuvre an obstacle course out of my drive way because there are bundles of branches on one side and big huge trash can (trash day!) on the other.

Welcome 2006!

Can't believe it's 2006! New Year Eve was fun! We went to Matador, this spanish restaurant with Salsa dancing and serves tapas. Since after about the second glass of sangria, i was in the semi-aware stage, you have to go to my friends' Tze and Yeesin's blog to look at my pink bunny picture.

A couple of my close friends are turning 30 this year. Unbelievable! When i first knew them, the 19 was the old one. New year is time for new resolution i guess. I'm never big into resolution, because i never kept them past the first week. I guess that my first new year resolution is to keep my resolution longer than 1 week. One of the problems of resolution is it is often too vague, not measurable, not specific and sometimes, not attainable. We should be writing New Year's SMART (Specific - Measurable - Achieveable - Realistic - Time sensitive) goal instead. However, I am way too lazy to structure my SMART new year goals now, so I'll just ramble my resolutions here, which will be structured into SMART goal later.

1. Spend more quality time with Ian. Being a working mother, i definitely need to make the most out of my time with my little boy. Interact with him while we are home, go to the park with him, bring him to mommy-toddler fitness class, go swimming (he loves to swim!), and speak more mandarin to him.

2. Learn as much as I could at work. Since starting my new job, I've stepped into a realm where I know very little, despite my 5.5 years experience in design. I need to ask more questions, involved in my discussion at work, and maybe make some friends along the way too.

3. Liberate Steve. You all know i married this guy named Steve who was raised around fundies (new term by Paul Mirecki, KU Professor) right, and I'm a raging liberal. The fact that we two have such bipolar view on all issues really aren't very good for our marriage. And to give my hubby's merit, he can really be very open-minded. (heck, he married me). He is just not around the right crowd. For god's sake, he went to this Christian school named Marinatha Academy whose definition of the 'F' word is 'FART'. How pathetic! I know it will be an uphill battle for me though. I'm not naive, it will take lots of time and patience, and lots of moments where I think i want to walk out. We live in Kansas, and he is surrounded by a bunch of self-righteous fundies. I know what i am up against. Sometimes, whenever one of his self-righteous sibling called him up to lecture him about something he did that is dubbed 'ungodly' (like say...... taking care of your pregnant fiancee), I feel like snatching the phone to tell them to f*** (not fart) off and to leave us the hell alone, and stuff all their fundie crap up their ass. It has been difficult, since they are not bad people, and they are his family and friends, so i need to give them certain respect and civility. For the most part, they leave me alone. But if they kept injecting those fundie thought into Steve's head, I feel like it is me against them all the time, and Steve's on their side. I guess the first step is to tell him that it is ok to use the real curse words, not the 'Christian' curse words. What's the point of saying 'dang it', while what you really mean is 'damn it'. It's just hypocritical and I despise that. Also, i think I need to be myself and not try so hard to fit in. I have done that for the past few years and I'm miserable, and I'm losing myself. I don't want to pretend to blush at the slightest profanity while I can actually curse like a sailor. One thing I really regretred was i probably alienated some of my best friends these past few years trying to be a goodie two shoes midwestern girl. I don't really know if i'm actually doing the right thing now either ....... since it sounds like now i risk alienating my own husband.