Happy Chinese New Year!

Here's a couple of cultural things I forgot to mention in my last post:

• At the end of my hot pot experience, I learned that it's considered bad luck for girls to cut a cake and cut all the way through to the bottom of the pan. If she does cut all the way through, she may never get married. Luckily at our party, none of the girls potential marriages were ruined because a guy grabbed the knife away to make sure.
  
• Kraft Dinner is not a staple of the world, only North America it seems. I bought my first box of it in like a year and Peggy had no idea what it was. When I gave her a taste, she seemed happy to keep it that way. :)
  
• There was more, but I forget what they were.
  

Anyways, Happy Chinese New Year! Today's the official start of the new lunar year. It's now the Year of the Dog. Apparently, if you're a dog, and were born in the Year of The Dog, you'll have extra bad luck. I would have thought it was the opposite, but Peggy was adamant that it's this way. Who'd have thunk it?

I won't be doing much for the New Year. We wanted to go travelling, but ticket prices for packages or even plain old flights have practically doubled if not tripled! Instead, we'll be chilling around Hong Kong, checking out the festivities. I'm pretty psyched, even if my chinese friends aren't. At least this is all new to me!

Today I'll be heading out with Jen and Peggy. We haven't hung out together in awhile, so we'll be going shopping (well, Jen and Peggy will shop - I'm just going to follow them as usual) and then going to the Flower Market in Victoria Park - a special New Year's thing.

Besides visiting the fireworks and parade, the only other plans I've made is to visit Lantau Island for a couple of nights. Several friends and I (err, last I heard, it was 14 friends) have rented a flat on the island for 2 nights. It's only costing us about $130HKD each ($18CAD) for the entire two nights. Swank, no? We'll be visiting the Big Buddha again, going hiking, biking, and BBQing.

One of the problems with my group of friends is that I seem to be hanging with a mostly Asian crowd these days. I find this mostly amusing (when you look at pictures, it's always easy to see me first because I'm the tallest and only white person) but it can sometimes be a bit awkward.

For example, last Sunday when I was at the BBQ with the Dim Sum club, I was one of two white people. As we began the BBQ, the other white guy left. I don't mind being the only white person, but that also means I was the only non-Cantonese speaker. The others all chattered away in Cantonese and I just sat there, focusing on my food. If it was Mandarin I wouldn't have felt so awkward (once in awhile they'd translate the occassional joke or let me in on the conversation), because at least then I could try to practice my mandarin skills, but cantonese is beyond me.

Nonetheless, I still always have fun with my pals, no matter how lost I may feel. And this particular group for New Year will be even more amusing - it'll be like our Singapore trip all over again. Things will need to be translated into English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese - who knows, if the Korean guy comes, maybe sometime else will be able to speak Korean with him. At least this time I'll know the one Japanese guy doesn't speak any English, and I'll stop trying to talk to him. :)