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+ Happy Lunar New Year and Year of the Snake to fellow Asians who celebrate! 🧧🐍
+As a Chinese person, Lunar New Year is a major holiday, especially given the fact that here in Malaysia, Lunar New Year is the only traditional Chinese holiday that is also an official holiday in a national scale, which means Lunar New Year is a holiday for non-Chinese people in Malaysia as well.
+Preparation
+#As for my family specifically, our tradition for celebrating Lunar New Year is family gatherings in my parents' hometown. In addition, as Lunar New Year takes place in January or February, we start preparing to celebrate it since early January, soon after a new year in Gregorian calendar begins. Our Lunar New Year celebration in 2025, the Year of the Snake, is no exception.
+This year, my younger brother, who has been living in Singapore since attending a university there and then working in Singapore since, returned to Malaysia from Singapore, which is not something we take for granted since he had skipped returning to Malaysia during Lunar New Year in the past, including the previous year.
+Lunar New Year Eve
+#Once we returned to my parents' hometown, we gathered with our extended family on my father's side for a reunion lunch (yes, lunch, not dinner since we had our reunion meal in the afternoon) on Lunar New Year Eve.
+After our lunch, my immediate family and I joined one of my paternal uncles, who owns the house we were staying in after the passing of my paternal grandmother, and his girlfriend in visiting our family's durian plantation. The highlight of the durian plantation visit is meeting my uncle's female dog Baak Baan for the first time.
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Baak Baan was a stray dog that was founded by my uncle when she walked into our durian plantation one day months ago. At the time, Baak Baan was injured, and starved to the extent that her ribs were visible. Thankfully, under my uncle's care, she had become healthier, so she became my uncle's pet and guard dog. She was named Baak Baan after the mahjong tile 白板 in Cantonese. Baak Baan was a good girl, and we enjoyed greeting and petting her.
+When the evening came, we prepared to count down to the arrival of Lunar New Year. As soon as 12 am of the first day of Lunar New Year arrived, fireworks began.
+First Day of Lunar New Year
+#My immediate family also has the tradition of visiting my maternal family in the morning of the first day of Lunar New Year and having lunch together in the afternoon, and 2025 was no different. I have large extended families on both parents' sides, due to the combination of my father having many siblings, my mother's elder sister having many children, who would end up having children on their own.
+Fun fact: both my parents were actually childhood neighbours who grew up in the same hometown, so I am lucky to have the convenience of being able to visit both sides of my extended families in the same place during Lunar New Year. While my maternal uncle had moved out several years ago, it is still not too far away from my parents' hometown, so we still do not need to travel far to gather with my maternal family during Lunar New Year.
+Return to My Home
+#We returned to my home from my parents' hometown on the second day of Lunar New Year, after taking our lunch.
+My brother went back to Singapore on the next day, which was also the third day of Lunar New Year.
+Watching a Malaysian Lunar New Year Film
+#While my family's Lunar New Year celebration in my parents' hometown had been over, we are still in a Lunar New Year mood. Therefore, on February 3, which was also lichun (立春) and the sixth day of Lunar New Year, my parents and I watched a Malaysian Lunar New Year film named Money Games (《半斤百两》) in a local cinema.
+This was the first Malaysian film I watched with my parents in cinema. I did not expect much from a Lunar New Year film to be a masterpiece since such films are made for entertainment first and foremost, but I had some good laughs out of the film. Not to mention, given how rampant news about Malaysians encountering scams are, an entertaining film aiming to be anti-fraud is not a bad idea.
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