Team work

Where I am concerned, the Chinese New Year celebrations are over. It ends for me today with the return of my son to the island. His studies continue and the new semester starts tomorrow. But with him around the house for the past two weeks or so, and with my daughter also at home from Kuala Lumpur for a week's break, it was really the best Chinese New Year present that my wife and I could ever had from them.

We were all together as a team from the moment that my daughter had arrived home. We all pitched in together to get things done around the house and also out of the house. Picture this:

On Chinese New Year's eve, the children helped their mother with the cooking. But in the morning, I helped them wash and clean the two cars. Then when it came to scrubbing the porch floor, they volunteered to do it by themselves. They went down on their knees to clean each and every inch of the porch.

There was a mini-crisis in the late afternoon when a picture frame came crashing down and the glass pane smashed to pieces. The children went about to look for the glass pieces and swept the whole of the living room thoroughly to remove them. I followed up with mopping the whole of the house.

We all did our fair share of cooking. My son contributed his skills to cook spaghetti with my wife on two days while my daughter helped me with my hokkien char. She also chipped in to assist with the preparation of the Chef Dad's chicken pie. My wife's pie filling was fantabulous!!

We didn't do much visiting this year. We didn't visit any relatives at all. In fact, the only external activities we planned together were to see the Robocop movie at the Sunway Carnival Mall, and visits to the Nandaka Vihara at the foothills of the Bukit Mertajam hill on the second day of the New Year, and to the Triple Wisdom Gem Temple in Pangkor Road and the Kuan Im Temple in Pitt Street on the third day.

Apart from that, since we were already out on the island, we decided to enjoy ourselves at the George Town Chinese New Year heritage celebration.

I should also mention that on the second day of the New Year, we took the opportunity to clear out all the clothes from their deceased grand-aunt's cupboard. They participated and had a lot of fun remembering their grand-aunt. All the good memories of their grand-aunt's love for them, all from just folding up her old clothes. I shall be taking these clothes to an Old Folks' Home later.

This about summed up our activities as a complete family. It was priceless....