Dog Year Comes By Barking

Again, I am not a holiday person. Or I claim that I treat each day like a holiday. I don't discriminate any day as particularly worth celebrating than the other. Because of Sienna, I set up a tiny weeny Christmas tree, only reluctantly. I made an effort to mark the few major Chinese holidays so that I could call home...

That's about to be changed. This year's Chinese New Year's day has been coming more noticeably and noisely, quite like the dog the year claims to be. The flyers for Chinese food lunch specials were flying here and there over the office desks. More non-Chinese people than ever say to me, "Gong Hey Fat Chai," a greeting I swear I never heard of growing up in China. Around the mall, red lanterns were hanging. The posh department stores put most definite Chinese touch on their decorations before they switch to Valentine's day look and feel. Baby Gap has a Sienna-like Chinese girl's photo beaming out of their big window. So touching. I cannot say I was not effected when I collected a hundred dollar worth of purchase for largest size possible to say fare-well to them. My baby has been so well dressed by Baby Gap and she is no baby any more. So nice to know people are trying and learning to please you, for whatever reason. At the Sony Store, they put on traditional Chun Lian. These are supposed to hung on both sides of the door facing outside. They did it facing inside. I was about to go in and point that out to them. Then I thought, "well, I will give you a year to learn on your own..."

I was talking to a network person whom I never met about some server configuration issues. At the end, I said, "happy new year" as I noticed his last name was Chinese. My other non-Chinese colleague wrote me a sweet greeting message from the other side the cubicle. She has endured and sometimes been entertained by this Chinese loud speaker. All I heard from her was chuckles. I wrote back, "Thank you, D! See how sweet and gentle you are. If I were you, I would have shouted over the wall. You have a nice weekend. We will eat as usual, or most probably a lot more than usual." Five seconds later, some more light chuckles from the other side.

Being a displaced Chinese living in Canada, I used to claim we are the people of no holidays. Now it’s safe to say we are becoming the people of all holidays.