The week before Chinese New Year was spent visiting with relatives and old friends. Very often, Mary would be out with her friends, I would be out with mine, and the kids with theirs. Of course, there were the common friends as well, when the whole family would be together. We were very fortunate that Mary’s brother loaned us the use of his spare car, and this helped us tremendously in getting from place to place. Of course, we also had occasion to use the MRT, buses and taxis.
Photos of some of our visits can be found here.
And of course, the main purpose of this visit was to celebrate Chinese New Year with our family and relatives. We had our reunion dinner at a restaurant called “No Signboard Restaurant” and we had our 7th and 8th aunties with us, as well as 8th Aunt’s eldest daughter and son-in-law and their friend. The dinner was good, but we couldn’t finish all the food, especially at the kids’ table, so we had to ‘ta pao’ back most of the food. The following few days were spent visiting and receiving relatives, and of course, we had the usual gambling sessions, which seems to be an essential part of CNY celebrations. Thankfully this year, I did not lose much money, and we had the pleasure of the Chias joining us for one of the sessions as well. Oh, there was a ‘turd’ story that I need to tell, but maybe not in this main post. 
Photos of Chinese New Year reunion dinner and visits are here.
And we even found time to visit the Singapore Flyer. It’s nice to fly once, and maybe once more at night to catch the city lights, but I cannot imagine ’flying’ more than that. And they were selling annual unlimited passes!
More Singapore Flyer photos here.
All too soon it was time to leave Singapore for home in Melbourne.
We were pleasantly surprised at the turnout at the airport to see us off, even though we had told everyone that there was no need to see us off. We were really touched, and it made leaving that much more painful.
Anyway, we had a pleasant flight home, and baby slept throughout the flight, so that gave us some peace and quiet. Mary managed to sleep too, but I only managed to grab about 2 or 3 hours of sleep. It took me quite a few days to adjust to the jet lag after arriving home.
At Melbourne airport, we were very fortunate to clear customs very quickly. The customs officer saw Mary struggling with baby, and decided that we could skip the queue and proceed directly out of the customs area. We were so quick that we even had to wait about twenty minutes for Tony to pick us up; though fortunately Jie arrived earlier and took baby and the other kids home first. Thanks Tony for coming to pick us up from the airport!
Photos of the airport farewell can be found here.
It had been a lovely visit, and we were sad to leave our family, relatives and friends. And of course, we would no longer have access to all our favourite Singapore foods like Chwee Kuey, Fried Hokkien Mee (yummy), Chilli crab, Fried Oyster in egg, Yakun butter toast etc. But we have made our home in Melbourne now, and there was certainly the feeling that it’s good to be home. Of course, nowadays with the internet, email, blogs and so forth, physical distance is no longer such a great impediment to communication and sharing of relationships.
