In The Mood For Red

Back when I was a student with time in my hands, I always loved getting the house ready for the Chinese New Year. Well, not the sweeping or the scrubbing or the washing part of it anyway. My inclinations never skewered that way.

No, what I would take charge of was, of course, the decorations! I loved doing it. From the folding origami to laying out the wall patterns, I would always strive to do something different every year. Granted, it wasn't easy and sometimes less than satisfying considering the limited resources I had to work with - namely, the season's cards and ang paos (red packets), thrown together with last years' (sometimes last five years') decorative pieces (think fake plum blossoms).

Once I was so bored of sticking the fake blossoms on twigs I decided to string them all up and hang them from the ceiling of the living room. This was way before a certain cafe opened in KL to rave reviews about its suspended feathers.

Nowadays, though, it's a much simpler affair. Above all, working till the last (or next to last) day before the new year means I don't have enough idle time in my hands to plot nefarious schemes to frustrate my mom (while I'm the one who puts up the decorations, she's the one who has to take them down).

Even with a place of my own now, I don't really bother much to do anything to it. As it is, I can barely keep my place clean and tidy. What's the point of decorating the place if there are books and mags here, there, everywhere; the dining tables a place to store shoeboxes and mails; and I haven't wiped the grime off the windows?

At least this year, I have new curtains so nobody has to look at the windows. And the mess on my dining table can be easily moved to a less conspicuous spot in my house (I have an entire room dedicated to a miscellany of messes). As for the books and mags... erm, I'll just call them decorative details.

Besides, tacky Chinese New Year decor is fine for the family home but no way I'll have that in my place! My reputation would be as tattered as a decade-old origami crane.

Maybe to add flavor to the occasion I'll buy a pumpkin for a centrepiece.

And perhaps, just perhaps, I would raise the red lantern - though my preferred phrase is "big red lantern high high hang".

For now, I'll settle for tinting my blog red.

Happy New Year, all! Time to get piggy wit' it.