Reunion dinners...

How was your reunion dinners?

I had a lot of thoughts during mine....

For friends who are non Chinese, Chinese all over the globe are celebrating the arrival of Spring or Chinese New Year which falls on 29th of Jan.. so on the last day of the chinese lunar year, families would gather round the dining table to have a meal together, spend time doing spring cleaning, bringing out the new yr goodies and all.. basically just to spend time together...

So usually for my family, we do this earlier each yr cos we have to accomodate my father's and mom's side of relatives who do reunion dinners as well...so this yr, we have three dinners to attend... on the 26th, it's our own family's dinner... together with my parents and brothers and sister in law... 27th, would be with my father's side of relatives and 28th would be with my mom's side of relatives...

This yr is exceptionally special cos this is the 1st yr that we're attending reunion dinner with my father's side at my aunt's place... if you can remember, my uncle passed away last yr in June.. before, we hardly turn up at the reunion dinner cos the schedule usually clash so we ended up attending only one which happens to be my mom's side...

Imagine gathering 8 siblings and their kids which turn out to be about 40 over ppl can be quite a difficult task to do.. but yes, we made it in the end... even my brother who was at work and whom we thought couldn't make it, turned up in the end.. really glad... although not all turned up cos my uncle's kids didn't turn up.. but it was a nice feeling to be able to mingle with them, catch up with how my cousins and aunts were doing... and oh, i've been promoted to an auntie now.. got so many little kids running around the house that night... my cousins' kids... when they started calling me auntie i was like... errmm.. can call me jie jie or not? *jie jie means big sister in chinese*

It was a great time that day to catch up and play sparklers with the kids... hope this would continue...

I had my reunion dinner with my mom's side on the 28th... went to this chinese restaurant located at novetel*think i spell wrongly*... i think business is really good... they booked the hotel's 2 big ballrooms and there were like 500 over tables... it took the staff a while to find out where we were seated... seated on the 5th floor and my god, it felt like a huge wedding dinner!our first dish came after half an hour... and then we waited... and waited... it seems like 45 mins before the second dish came.... everybody was getting grouchy and irritated... when the second dish finally came, it took even longer before the third dish came... the staff looked so young and inexperienced... usually when ppl serve sharks' fin, they would bring the whole bowl to the table and serve.. this restaurant had a unique style... they would separate into individual bowls and then bring two by two to your table... *faintz* food were served cold and slow... some tables complained to the manager... imagine at about 830, we were only at our 3rd dish... oh well, when singaporeans complain, it's not a good thing... we finally finished our whole course of dinner at about 930 close to 1000.. and the best thing is, we got a 50% discount... cos there were simply too many ppl complaining... i think we'll never go back there anymore....