Chinese New Year has never been a big deal for me. When I was younger, I never appreciated the get-together opportunity this festival afforded, simply because I was too young to appreciate re-connecting with long-lost cousins and aunties and uncles that I actually cared about. Every year for 23 years, I joined the season exodus of KL for Penang, the hometown of my parents, which really couldn't have contributed to my enthusiasm (not!). The long car ride up north, the traffic jam back to KL, and the invariable squabbling and fighting - I don't come from the most peaceful of households to begin with, and four feisty, irritated siblings who didn't even want to be there in the first place was a recipe for chaos - unfortunately make up much (though not all) of my CNY impressions, along with other equally unfestive memories.

Then I got married, and I finally got to spend CNY in KL. I couldn't wait for my first time. It was fantastic. My siblings got jealous almost a full year before they had to make their first trip without me, while I patted myself on the back for getting myself a cool husband and in-laws who stayed put for the festival. Their jealousy didn't last too long. The following year marked their first CNY not celebrated in Penang, and this year appears to have cemented that end to those long journeys. Penang is fantastic, but CNY really isn't the best time to visit. Plus, I do like to be in charge of my itinerary (read: go with friends instead of the parents).

Anyway, like I was saying, CNY has never been a big deal for me, so you'll forgive me if I was more excited this year about my four-day weekend than about wearing red and hearing fireworks. I was very pleasantly surprised. In fact, I had such a good time I'm making a list of my top three CNY highlights this year, in no particular order:

1. Seeing long-lost cousins and aunties and uncles
This is definitely a sign of my advancing years. I was so thrilled to see cousins I hadn't seen in like, three years, and others I hardly see even though they live here in KL, and aunties and uncles from afar and... Basically, it was just a lot of fun. The cousins even had our very first excursion - to watch The Eye at the cinema (we couldn't get tickets for anything else). Y doesn't really get it because he barely spends time with his cousins, but he came along for the movie and I am very pleased.

2. Singing karaoke with my siblings
Y's mum recently bought a karaoke machine for the house and I'm determined to play my part in making sure it's well-used. I admit to being rather surprised I managed to get all four of us to sing together, but we had a blast. My I'm-fifteen-this-year-and-oh-so-cool younger brother Josh sang too! And we have rather incriminating videos of Bec and Jess, which I will consider putting up if I can get them off Josh.

3. Non-existent traffic!
This is a recurring highlight. I'm going to miss getting practically anywhere in ten minutes when the revelers return from their various kampungs.

Not-so-highlights:

1. Everyone seems to have taken the opportunity of CNY (don't ask me how it's connected) to put forward their requests/opinions that I reproduce. I have many thoughts on that subject, which I will expound on in a separate entry. Maybe tomorrow.

Already running super-late for a media preview of CJ7, I brisk walk into GSC Mid Valley, and stop short when a rat scampers across the lobby. Scampers - I like that word. It's a good thing I'm not afraid of rodents, but everyone else around me is. As the women scream and dart into faraway corners, I watch with amusement as the men stand their ground... carefully keeping their distance as well.

Already running super-late for my media preview of CJ7, I brisk walk towards the designated cinema hall, and stop short when the rat scampers past me and traps itself between me and the closed doors of the cinema I need to get into. The women are all safely hidden away by now, and the men and I watch with amusement as the rat runs around in circles in an effort to find a way out... carefully keeping our distance.

Just because I'm not afraid of it doesn't mean I'm going to go right up to it and shoo it out of my way. It eventually works out an escape route. I should have taken a photo. But if it were a monitor lizard crawling across the lobby, I'd have told Stephen Chow to stuff it and gone straight back to my car.

The movie wasn't half bad, by the way.

Happy Chinese New Year!

It's been a flat-out week - for some reason, the New Year seems to have brought more traffic jams (as if a whole new bunch of people just started work on 2 January) and more work hours. Even though we've recently had two new additions to our team, which technically should mean work is being spread out, right?

No matter, at least there's cable TV in the office, so this happy camper has been getting her fill of the Aussie Open and American Idol. There's also a lot, and I mean a lot, of junk food, which us girls have been devouring at freaky speed (the guys in the office just don't seem to eat).

But that's not what I mean by thievery.

My colleague got her handbag snatched this week. Right in front of the office! It was about 5.20pm and she was opening her car door to get in when a Malay guy who was standing nearby pretending to talk on the phone snatched her bag, ran to an accomplice on a motorbike, and the two sped away.

We were furious.

I actually don't know who was more angry - my poor colleague who lost everything including her spare car keys which happened to be in her bag; my bosses who, as a result, have had to change all the locks in the office and run around looking for padlocks because my colleague had copies of the office keys in her bag; or the rest of us, angry for our colleague, for the inconvenience, for the atrosity, for the knowledge that we will never feel safe from now on. We wanted to inflict pain. Or at least, I and a couple others did.

While we satisfied ourselves with fuming and imagining scenes where we would all miraculously be able to beat up a couple of snatch thieves, my boss rang the stolen mobile phone, and it turns out the _____ (insert rude name here) had not turned off the phone! They canceled my boss' call, and he promptly texted them something along the lines of:

If you fucking come back here again, I'm going to fucking kill you.

Can you believe the punks actually replied? And in English too! Something along the lines of:

I can see you, you can't see me, you can't catch me, ha ha ha!

?!!!?? And then they came back the next day! They rode past the office, stopped and stared inside for a while and then ran off before we could call the cops. If they show their faces again and for some reason we don't quite manage to run them down, we're bringing in the police.

I should also add that this is the second time they've snatched a bag in front of our office, so the entire road is Very Very Angry.

Everyone is now on the watch for two Malay ____ (insert rude name again, feel free to be creative) on a motorbike, one of them dark and small and the other taller and with a moustache, loitering around the area. Unfortunately, that description fits a lot of people.

The day after the incident, another colleague called us from her car at about 6pm.

"I'm in the car already, but there's a Malay guy on a motorbike with a moustache just hanging around outside the office. He's on his mobile phone but he doesn't seem to be doing anything, quite suspicious."

We promptly sent our boss down to investigate, and five minutes later, he came back.

"It's the architect from the firm next door."

Oh.

I think I should invest in a baseball bat.

I like this pic - for soppy reasons. These kids were trying to persuade me to buy their wares for "one dollar", and the little girl on the left demonstrated much entrepreneurial potential when she changed her tune from "three for one dollar" to "four from one dollar" after about three minutes of trailing me.

The boy in the baseball cap gave up pretty quick, but the other boy with the recorder and the girl stuck on for ages! The boy was pretty cute too, he played the recorder to show me how it worked, and I was this close to reaching for my purse to give these kids a dollar each - just for being so cute and for trying so hard.

Then I remembered, Y had all the small notes.

These were the only two kids I seriously considered buying stuff from, firstly because they'd followed me so far off their beat there were no other kids around so no one would be disappointed, secondly because they were really persistent and cute, thirdly because I could always have given away the stuff I bought as souvenirs. Too bad Y had the foresight to only give me big notes. If there's one regret I have from Cambodia, it'd be not buying from these two (forget the boy in the baseball cap).

For the rest of G's pics, go here.

Who?

The boys...

and I.

There was this really cool half hour after Angkor Wat where we tried to climb a massive tree (and got seriously put to shame by the local kids) and actually managed to get up there without killing each other or ourselves, but only Y and G have the pics for that one. That was a cool one, but.

Day 2: Angkor Thom, Bahkeng Mountain

More pretty lasses with hearts of stone. I wonder where they got all these stones to build all these temples from. And how they transported them.

Beautiful, isn't it? This, Bayon Temple, is just one of a whole bunch of temples. We politely - but firmly - refused to visit every single temple within Angkor Thom, and within Siem Reap for that matter. Our poor guide. If you look closely, all four sides of each tower are carved with a woman's face. The faces are all slightly different.

Here's a close-up.

And another. J is not trying to pick up that chick. Though, naturally, we told the guide otherwise.

Sunset at Bahkeng Mountain. We had to climb the steepest steps to get up here for this. We also had to wait some two hours because the guide didn't know what to do with us, seeing as we had refused to go look at more temples.

This is, quite possibly, the most overrated sunset in the world. I mean, it's really beautiful and all, but you should have seen the number of tourists waiting and jostling for a good spot to catch this one. I'm thinking there must have been over 200 people there. Personally, I thought the really steep stairs leading up to this and the trek up and down the mountain were more fun - in typical Y fashion, we refused to walk down the normal path with the mere mortals, we had to beat our path through trails and shortcuts.