My First Chinese New Year Overseas

Happy Lunar New Year!!!

In the festive mood in Oulu

The day started off with a webcam session with my family and relatives in the morning. It was nice to see my little cousins and grandmother after almost a month.

Then it was surfing the net and exploring facebook (had to join to view the photos of Matthew's new ride. Cool sports car. Haha..), followed by going over to Gao Xiao's place to prepare for the celebrations in the evening. What appears to be a nice paper cutting in the photo above is actually just printed out. Not so skillful and not so much time available to cut it out.

Thawing the pork for the dumplings

Cooking the crushed pineapples for the tarts

It was a fantastic idea to use canned, crushed pineapples! We should have cooked the pineapples for a longer period of time for the sugar to caramelize and for it to be totally dry so that it would look like the ones found in Singapore, but being inexperienced, we decided to play safe and remove it earlier.

Placing excess pineapple on the tarts

Placing the excess pineapple filling on the tarts was a mistake. You'll see why in the next photo...

yup, the top is burnt

The tarts tasted vaguely similar to the ones you get in Singapore. But for people with no experience, and with lots of improvision, we are quite satisfied with the results. We definitely can do better next time. And having an oven at home allows you to try many different things. Baking is fun. Lucky Cherie. The exchange students liked the tarts we made (because they haven't tried the real thing from Singapore yet. Wahaha..)

Helping out with the dumplings which are much harder to make than tarts

More people started arriving

And they brought food with them

More food!!

The machine providing the music for the night

He goes around with his vodka bottle and makes us drink from the cap, me included

Us squeezing in a lift meant for 4 people

Beer cans and bottles from the party downstairs



Kazuki singing with Wai Lon as calefare

Kazuki is the one who baked the pasteries for us about 2 weeks ago. The ones with jam in it. He's very good looking. Haha..

2 bottles of Vodka


Preparing flaming vodka

I tried a flaming vodka today. It was smarting my eyes, but I managed to finish it. Didn't get drunk though. Many of us tried it. Was it supposed to be nice? Haha..

And this is Sam, who went naked this afternoon after he lost his swimming trunks during ice hole swimming

It's 2.10 am now, and I will eat a piece of bread and go to sleep. Gotta wake up by 1 pm tomorrow to webcam with my family to bai nian.

I'M MISSING THE GOOD FOOD!!!!!