Chinese New Year Party (2/17)

Finally the Big Day has arrived. It was really successful and everyone brought home with them a sweet memory from this celebration…….

It was 2 weeks ago (on KL & YL’s Baby Shower Day) when we have decided to make this Chinese New Year a very special one. We want to make it BIG and so BIG that it will include all the Malaysians that we can account of and the Chinese will provide food to all the guests. One of the reasons for our decision is that the Malays had invited all the Chinese to their Hari Raya Celebration last year and it’s our turn to return the courtesy. Once the decision was made, we each volunteered to provide at least one dish that can feed up to 20 people. It started with only about 8 families contributing the following dishes:
Lena & Jeffrey - Stewed Chicken Feet with Mushroom
Angela & Tharu - Shrimp and Scallop
Ivy, Winnie & Jamie - Roasted Pork (Char Siew) & Sweet and Sour Fish
Patricia & Anjoe - Sambal Chicken
Yeen Lee & Kang Lung - Char Chi Kai (Crispy Chicken) from Lucky Wok
Caroline & Gary - Plasticware, Fried Popiah, Steam and Fried Rice & Yee Sang
Rita & Steven - Tofu dish and Chinese dessert (Nian Gao)
Kean Teik & Wee Sen - Ice & Lots of Drinks, Drinks and Drinks for children and adults

Soon, Carol (our head coordinator) composed an e-mail to all our Chinese friends about our big plan, within a week many have replied and our lists of food became longer:
Siew Lau - veggie Sushi roll and fried calamari
Diana & Adrian - Fried Pickle Veggie with meat
Tze Ching & Yee Sin - Dumplings and Tong Sui
Rach & Egwin - Kung Pao Chicken
Clarice Kinsella - Vegetarian Dish
Ang Eng Chew - Fried Mee Hoon and Sambal Ikan Bilis
Daniel - 3 bags of Tangerines
Shirnee & family - cake
Elaine & Kyle - Fried chicken wings
Yim & Shun - Curry chicken and Thai Salad
Jason Chooi - Kacang (Peanut)/ Kua Chi (Watermelonseed/Sunflowerseed)
Danny Ng - Salt Baked Chicken
Eric & Michelle - Mild spicy salmon cooked in coconut milk
Lauren & Scott - Kuih Talam

Let's not forget to mention that the Malaysian Association paid for the rental of the venue for this event. With the support & contributions of everyone (we have enough food to feed the whole "kampung"!!), we confidently extended our invitation to our Malay and Indian friends. There were also some details that many have helped solve, such as decorations (Angela's mom sent from Malaysia), table settings (again thanks to Carol & Lena!), Chinese New Year songs, food warmers, MC (good job Egwin), and photographers (thanks to Gary & Steven). Few days before our BIG DAY, Carol again sent out an e-mail informing everyone that about 80 people have confirmed their attendance and attached the list of food for our party. That was really an exciting and mouth-watering e-mail....I was so looking forward to it..:P
On that day, Athena and Nelia dressed up in their new dresses. Jamie wore his new shirt and pants too. Ivy found a new pink top and I put on a cheongsam that I borrowed from Ghita (a Malay friend...yeah, even Chinese don't have as many cheongsams as she does..:)). When we arrived at the party (about 6:30pm), the big party room was half full of people and the food table started from one side of the wall to the other side of the wall. There were more food than what I listed here and I found out that our Malay and Indian friends also brought food to share! To make this event more special, Steven has set up his professional camera with lighting at the sitting area to take pictures for everyone (I finally has a nice family picture...Thanks so much, Steven!!).

The event started with a funny welcome speech from our MC, Egwin. Then we "Loh Yee Sang" (Carol's & Lena's mom sent from Malaysia). For what I can remember, the next few hours I just ate...ate ...ate, talked...talked...talked and laughed...laughed...laughed!!!I believe everyone else did the same. We had so much fun until we realized it's time to clean up and leave. So, everyone "gotong-royong" again to help clean-up and arrange the tables/chairs. Not quite "puas", so we continued our party at Wee Sen's house. At his house, we ate our home-made cookies, played blackjack & mahjong, and chit-chat till about 3:00am....It was the first time I feel as if I was celebrating Chinese New Year in Malaysia. Thanks to all that made this Chinese New Year so memorable...:)