Gong Xi Fa Cai

Book of the Week: The Rough Guide to New Zealand and DK Eyewitness Travel: New Zealand (wahey, not one but two books!)

Happy Chinese New Year! We’re 11 days into the Year of the Golden Pig now, and, being the glass-half-empty person that I am, I am only too aware that I have fewer than 350 days left before I reach the end of my third cycle of the Chinese zodiac. Such thoughts usually get me all depressed, but dammit, my life will be heading in a completely new direction this year (or so I hope!), so I really should be less of a grump and look forward to all that promises, instead of moaning about how old I’m getting and how I haven’t done half the stuff I had planned to do by 35. (Come to think of it, I still haven’t done half the stuff I had planned to do by the time I was 30...)

This year’s Chinese New Year was rather Dickensian – by that I mean it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was brilliant in that in the one week I was home, I managed to see most of my relatives again (and a few I hadn’t met before – like my quarter-Chinese cousin and his family) after a long year away in Scotland. We also saw a lion dance performance in the house next to my uncle’s (it’s been ages since I’ve seen one) and I had decent ang pau takings. There was plenty of merriment and camaraderie, the sort you get when families who haven’t got together for a while do so and there’s plenty of free-flowing food and drink at hand.

And I’m not just saying that. Chinese New Year is a time to pig out. Eating is Malaysia’s all-time favourite pastime (perhaps “obsession” is a better word), and nobody does it better than the Chinese. My relatives, whilst lacking the funds to throw 300-course dinners of Dionysian proportions, usually put on a pretty good show with at least 10 different dishes on the table every night for the first week of the New Year, and this year was no different. We had our traditional annual Chinese New Year’s Eve reunion dinner (we broke with tradition and had a “steamboat” hotpot this year) and Auntie Liang treated all of 21 of us to a family (or is that more like clan?) lunch at a posh restaurant on the third day of the New Year. Auntie Chai threw a dinner at her place that same night, followed by another hotpot dinner three nights later – during the course of which I promptly broke my lovely, absolute-best titanium specs. The frame just broke into two, just like that (I usually have to sit on it first), and dangled off the bridge of my nose. This, of course, annoyed me no end: firstly, it meant my ang pau money would be going into some optician’s pocket, rather than to New Zealand; and secondly, what the hell happened? It’s titanium, dammit! TITANIUM! One of the coolest materials available to man, corrosion-resistant and having the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any metal, and they can’t make a decent spec frame out of it?! Typical. Spend a quarter of your salary on specs which turn out to have the shortest lifespan (18 months) of all the specs you’ve ever worn. Huh. Not very reassuring. What freaks me out is that I have a not insubstantial amount of titanium bolted to my fibula and tibia... crikey, maybe my ankle’s supposed to go all bendy any day now...!

The best part was the announcement at the reunion dinner: my cousin is pregnant. I’m going to be an aunt. The baby’s due at the end of June and whilst it won’t be the first of the next generation, it will be the first “Lee” baby, i.e. the first one born to a cousin bearing the family name. As there are only four of us Lees in this generation, and all of us are girls, the baby itself won’t bear the family name, but the fact that my uncles and aunts will be get to be called Ah Pek Kong, Sar Chek Kong and Kor Poh, instead of Ku Kong and Ee Poh, means a lot to everyone. It’s all very exciting, and I think I could make some money playing bookie and taking bets on the sprog’s sex.

But the New Year was also awful, in a quiet, “we know what’s happening but we’re not really going to talk about it” sort of way. Not very healthy emotionally, but I don’t think anyone wanted to say anything to dampen the gaiety. Uncle Leong’s absence was felt and noted, especially at the dinner at Auntie Chai’s. My aunt – his widow – was cheerful, but tears welled up in her eyes every few minutes. No doubt she was missing him and thinking of the last New Year we were all together (with me propped up with a broken ankle). All of us felt the same way, but nobody broached the subject. But then again, I don’t suppose words were needed. I just kept quiet and raised a glass of wine to his memory. (I also watched Kung Fu Hustle two nights in a row because the skinny mustachioed good guy reminded me of him.)

There was also a wee personal crisis for me. At times – actually, a lot of the time – I felt rather unwelcome and unwanted, like the extra cog duct-taped to the side of a machine already chugging along perfectly. Paranoia? Perhaps. Self-absorption? It’s likely. There were times when I simply felt desperately down, and all I could do was cry. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it lest I looked like I was oversensitive, depressed and whinging over nothing. The best I could do in those moments was text Gareth, who was incredibly supportive and encouraging. Funny how problems so close to home can sometimes be solved – or at least made better – by someone halfway around the world.

Speaking of Gareth, he’ll be here in just over a week, and when he comes through arrivals at KLIA, the first thing I’m going to do is give him a big thank-you hug. It’s been a little over two months since we last saw each other, but time has really flown – when we last said toodle-pips, it was exactly 80 days to our meeting up again, and as of today there are just nine (or closer to eight by the time I post this). I’ve missed him absolutely hunners and hunners, so I think it will be a pretty long hug. (And while I’m at it – suggestions on how to best be an SPG will also be much appreciated. He is an ang moh, after all!)

I must admit that excited as I am, I await March 9 with some trepidation: there’s so much I still need to do, and Gareth’s arrival only heightens the urgency with which I must do them. I still haven’t finished packing my crap – and even if I had, I still haven’t decided how I’m going to send it to Scotland. (“Packing” makes the process sound so Martha Stewart; in my case it is more like sorting through 15 years of accumulated rubbish, mostly objects of sentimental significance and paperwork I never really bothered to file away, and now I’m paying the price for my lack of organization. If there was ever an argument to be tidy, this is it.) Also, I still haven’t got my malaria tablets (for Cambodia), a thorough health check-up (people I know seem to be keeling over from high cholesterol and blood pressure), and flight ticket (to Glasgow). And most importantly, I still haven’t found a home for Coconut. That’s especially worrying because I really don’t want to abandon him, and I don’t want to give him to someone who won’t give him every opportunity to be a fat (the little bugger is really putting on weight), happy, free-range guinea pig. (I like to think that I’m the best thing that ever happened to Coconut, even if Dusty did get into the house and into his enclosure last week, and would have made piggy pie of him if he hadn’t been blissfully snuggled inside his favourite paper bag.)

What I have done, though, is get a major hurdle out of the way: on Monday afternoon, I picked up my passport from VFS. Inside it, on page 11, was the newly minted Fresh Talent visa, a page-sized sticker signifying the culmination of a long, exhausting journey (and that’s just the application process) that has taken the better part of the last four years. I can finally work in Scotland. I am going to work in Scotland. When I ran my fingers over the embossed lion and unicorn, I didn’t know whether to shout “YES!!!!!!!” or cry – all I knew was it felt like a little bit more of life lived, and that I had achieved something I had dreamt of and worked so hard at for so long. (OK, OK, fine, I admit it – I was really more pre-occupied with checking that all my official documents had been returned with the passport…)

However, I’m beginning to wonder if moving to Scotland is what I really want, now that I’ve read two New Zealand guidebooks as part of my preparation for my trip there in April. (Hey, I’m hard to please! And fickle!) I usually devour guidebooks like potato scones before a trip, but I’ve broken that rule this time. I’ve been looking at the gorgeous photos instead – the ones in the DK guide are especially jaw-dropping. (That reminds me, I really need to catch up on my reading in general. I’m woefully behind in my resolution to read a book a week this year.) Another travel rule I’ve broken is the one about the Lonely Planet guidebook. It doesn’t even feature on this trip. Instead, we’ve opted for a balance: the Rough Guide (info-heavy, crap on visuals) and DK (crap/inadequate info, lush visuals). Unfortunately, this particular DK does not have the exquisitely detailed city maps we know and love, so, obviously, we’ll need to get a mini road atlas or something. (The typos in the DK are also quite appalling - “new zealanders” in lower-case? – I mean, who proofreads these things???) The third rule I’ve thrown out the window is the to-do list. I usually have a list of must-sees, but for New Zealand I say the hell with it, I’m there for the rush and just want to take in everything. There’s just so much in New Zealand I’m looking forward to, I don’t think two weeks will be enough. If the photos are anything to go by, I can totally see myself returning time and again. It’s a good jump-off point for Micronesia too… not been there yet…

Other stuff I want to remember from this week: I saw a documentary which featured capybaras, and damned if they don’t look like gigantic guinea pigs. And I watched the entire first season of Prison Break. Can’t wait to see the second. I’m also losing handfuls of hair. The thought that I might be forced to abandon my Sadako impersonations is rather depressing. Got new specs (bye-bye ang pau, sob!) – I collect them this weekend and am trying out rimless frames for the first time (and no, they are not titanium). Will be interesting to see if I end up looking even more geeky (or is that geek-ier?) than usual.

But enough observations. Let’s see what I learnt this week.

Factoids of the Week:
Not sure if this is apocryphal, but it’s a great story nevertheless. The two-finger “V”-sign supposedly dates from the Hundred Years War. English longbowmen who were captured by the French in battle would have their index and middle fingers cut off, to prevent them from ever firing an arrow again. (Large numbers of French knights were killed by the arrows of English longbowmen at Crécy and Agincourt.) Hence, when the English won, the bowmen, in buoyant nerrr-nerrr mood, used the “V”-sign to show defiance to the French in battle.

I love this factoid for its cuteness. One of the first settlers of Milford Sound in New Zealand’s South Island was Donald Sutherland, who arrived with his dog – named John O’Groats.

With a population of about 40 million sheep, New Zealand has 10 meh-mehs to every person, down from the 1980s, when there were 20 meh-mehs to every person. Despite the decline, New Zealand still corners 50% of international trade in sheep meat.

Auckland is purported to have the greatest number of pleasure boats per capita of any city in the world.

New Zealand was the last major landmass to be populated, with Polynesian settlers arriving over 800 years ago. Until 80 million years ago, it was part of the supercontinent Gondwanaland, and was still attached to Australia. Even today, as the continents continue to drift apart, New Zealand is still moving northwards towards the equator at a rate of 30mm a year.

Like Australia, New Zealand’s flora and fauna evolved in isolation, into forms unseen on other continents. Due to the lack of predators, New Zealand birds somehow thought, right, we don’t need wings no more – and became flightless. They also developed into monsters like the giant moa (now extinct), which stood over 2m (or seven feet) tall.

(I read lots of cool factoids in the two guidebooks but I can’t remember many – more may be posted here as I thumb through them again.)