The lunar christmas

Today is the winter day in the chinese lunar calender. On this day, we're supposed to.. i have no idea what happens on the chinese winter festival, only that we get to eat balls of white and pink glutinous dough called tong yun (canto). In fact, i don't even know if the winter day is supposed to signify the begining or the end of winter. To me, its like the chinese christmas, a christmas without the gift exchange.

Speaking of tong yun, i remember one of my cousins do not eat it because she wear braces. Gets gooey glutinous dough stuck or so the reasoning goes. And when she did eat it, she did it by swallowing the whole ball. Ball by ball.. Anyway, that was when she had braces on.

Speaking of gift exchange on christmas, i think it was more fun a many years back where everybody bought something and which present goes to who, was determined randomly. These years, the recipient of the gift is randomly decided way before christmas. The difference is that in the former, everyone bought what they liked while the later everyone bought what they thought the designated person liked.

Suffice to say, the former generated alot more hee hur hoo har and was thus more fun.

Also of note was that thinking what a person would like for christmas does not necessarily mean the person really would like it. As evidenced in last year's lego saga. And this year my cousin random gift recipient is my brother. I can only speculate as to whether my brother is gonna get a starwars episode five lego set: the empire strikes back.