It's The Lunar New Year! And Other Holidays Too.

The Lunar/Chinese New Year celebration is coming soon, in a week's time. Everywhere I turn, splashes of red can be seen. Red is after all, an auspicious colour.

That's me, in a very festive Chinese New Year mood

We ourselves (that's me and family) do not celebrate the Lunar New Year as we are both Malay and Muslims but Malaysians do enjoy a two-day public holidays for the lunar/Chinese New Year this Jan 23rd and 24th.

Wishing everyone who celebrates the Chinese New Year a Happy New Year. Gong Xi Fa Cai. Xin Nian Kuai Le. May you have a happy, auspicious and prosperous Chinese New Year.

I look forward to do some "loh hei"  which means tossing of salad, with my fellow colleagues. It's a symbol for gathering prosperity. Toss the salad high with your chopsticks to raise good luck! The higher the toss, the better your luck will be. *^-^*

"Yee sang" literally means raw fish. It has raw strips of salmon as the main ingredients with shredded mix vege, jellyfish, crackers, sauces and condiments. Even though I mentioned that I don't celebrate the festival itself (I am neither a Buddhist nor a Chinese),  I do enjoy having fun during the festival with my Chinese friends and colleagues.

Not only that, I am so looking forward to hampers and mandarin oranges that will be sent over to my department! I love free oranges! xD For singles, those oranges can come handy during "Chap Goh Mei"  which marks the end of the Chinese New Year celebration; by throwing them into rivers/sea in the hope of finding a good husband.

And in about three weeks, we Muslims will be celebrating the Maulidur Rasul which is the Prophet Muhammad's birthday. Yes, everyone gets a day off. The celebration itself though, is pretty much low-key.

Then, two days after the Maulidur Rasul; there is Thaipusam (another holiday, yeay!) an important festival for the Hindus. Also, Ponggal which is a Tamil harvest festival is celebrated this Sunday!

Diversity in culture, we certainly have in Malaysia.

Talking about diversity, how many languages are spoken in Malaysia? Well, for starters there's Malay (which is my mother tongue), Chinese (and spoken in many dialects too - Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Hainanese, etc), Indian (Tamil being the predominant one but there's Hindi, Telugu etc spoken too) and then you have various ethnic languages too, like Iban, Kadazan etc. And of course, English is spoken in everyday life.

Being just bilingual in Malaysia can be rather a handicap.

I'm putting up this post here, instead of over at my other blog for the benefit of my non-Malaysian readers - specifically to Rurousha for a bit of insight on Malaysia. Can't talk about Japan incessantly, can we? Lest you think I don't care about my own country!