18
Feb
Preparing for Chinese New Year
My bedroom is the pig sty, as usual. The lair remains as messy as the rest of the year, and Chinese New Year does nothing to get me to at least tidy up the mess. Of course, the obvious dirt and dust needs to be cleaned off, but everything stays where they are.
Mother has given up on getting me to do something that remotely sounds like tidying, and instead got me to wash the fans instead.
We have 4 fans throughout the house, among 2 of them are in my room. The greyish goo clung tenaciously to the frame and fan blades when I tried to scrub the entire mess out. One year of dirt, and anyone who gets to see it would wonder if I really did do my National Service. Obfuscation at its best!
The washing machine decided to give up the ghost after just 3 short years of service, right when the change of clothes, beddings around the house generated the biggest laundry pile I had ever seen in one go. Mother got the striking machine replaced without hesitation. That’s what you get when you refuse to do work in the crunch! Mother should really be a HR executive or something.
Its replacement stood proudly in the kitchen, beaming happily at the touch of the button, but it wet the floor the first time we tried to get the dirty water to drain. Not only did it remind me of a new-born, it also shivered harder than any celebrity could shake their babies.
I tried to read the manual that came with the washer, and I had a barely uncontrollable urge to grab a red pen. You would soon understand that Japanese products come with really weird English documentation. The last resort would be to just dump the laundry in, cover the top, press whichever button that makes the most logical sense, and hope for the best. Thank goodness the machine was not some ticking nuclear bomb that we had to disarm: it would be extremely disturbing to have to take potshots in the hope of postponing Doomsday.
At least it worked, and I really like the countdown LED on the digital panel. That gave me something to stare at if I was not mersmirised by the mini-maelstorm stirring in the tub.
After all these, I realised that I had not yet bought any clothes for the new year, and I rushed to Toa Payoh for my last minute shopping.
The shops were thankfully open, but the selection was boringly plain. There was a huge range of plain tee-shirts without any pictures, though I was turned off by their uniformity. It was disturbing to see all the shops stocking designless shirts.
The New Year was saved by a signboardless shop. I caught sight of a few tee-shirts - though a little plain, they were way less boring compared to the blank slates. I like their price tags too! You would, if you managed to get your hands on a $5 tee-shirt; as compared to settling for $23 plain, single-coloured, designless uniforms from a branded boutique.
So how did your New Year preparations go?
on March 2nd, 2007 at 12:14 am
I’m still preparing for LAST year!
on March 3rd, 2007 at 10:53 pm
You might want to start preparing for next year then
My mom likes to obsess over the preparations each year, so we end up turning the house inside out. This year was an exception, so I figured that she largely gave up picking up after two stys.