Happy 牛 Year

This is the Chinese zodiac year of the ox, and the word 牛 sounds like "new", hence the pun in the title.

Chinese New Year for the typical Chinese Malaysian family is kind of like a combination of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day all rolled into one.

Thanksgiving: on Chinese New Year Eve, all the grown boys & their families, and unmarried girls go home to their parents' house for a big reunion dinner. (You traditionally visit the married girls' parents on the 2^nd day,though due to logistics and circumstances, we actually visited Juliane's father after leaving my parents' house on the 1^st day this year.)
Christmas: The married people give the unmarried people red packets containing money "ang pau". ("ang" = red, "pau" = wrapped/wrapping.)
New Year's Day: It is the Spring Festival, signifying a new year in the Chinese Lunar Calendar.

Click on the photo above to see the full album of photos with photos of some of the traditions as well.

Joni swings herself & climbs the play tube

Joni swings herself and climbs the play tube for the first time.

Joni enjoys Christmas decorations

Joni loves Christmas decorations, especially Christmas lights. Here she is enjoying them with her cousins Benjamin, Jeremy and Daniel at a mall.

Joni plays carols on the piano!

When we visited the Bear and Lizzie, Joni saw her daddy playing Christmas carols on the piano and wanted to give it a try

Click on this small photo to see all the photos.

Joni toots an Ocarina & has a fun time at the park

Last night, I handed Joni one of my polyclay ocarinas and she managed to get a toot on it! She had been watching with fascination as I played it before that.

Click on the small photo on the right to see the other photos we took that day.

We also took her to the park and she had a great time:


Ultrasound of #2 at 12 weeks
On 11 December, we went for an ultrasound at the 12th week checkup.

Blessed Christmas!

SciFi cars in Malaysia

I couldn't believe my eyes when, driving home from work today, I saw this car:

Yes, this is a real, undoctored photo! (The only thing I did was to enhance the contrast.) A real car with the license plate NCC-1701! This in Malaysia, a country which does not allow personalized license plates.

Here is a close-up of the plate:
Later, I overtook the car and parked by the side of the road to wait for it to show up and waved at him and he stopped and introduced himself -- the car belongs to Richard Si, and, not surprisingly, he is an avid Star Trek fan. So I got a photo with him and his car:

But Richard's car is not the only Sci-Fi car on Malaysian roads. One quite common model of the Malaysian car Perodua MyVi looks like an Imperial Stormtrooper from Star Wars from the back: