This year, by wonderful coincidence, Chinese New Year falls on the same day as Australia Day.

Perhaps I hoped for a more creative combination of the two cultures – barbecued roast duck, mushrooms in vegemite sauce, crab and beer soup. But I suppose it’s best not to mess with tradition.

We had huge reunion dinner at my grandmother’s house, with my whole Chinese family! It was so much fun! So nice to see all the little cousins and grandchildren grow up.

I found the stash of Chinese New Year cookies. Some hand made by my aunties. It brought back so many memories of being a kid. We used to snack on this stuff for weeks. Until our bellies were full and our cheeks were raw from all the sugar and peanuts.

These days, I don’t give my kids any of these snacks as liberally as my parents did for us. In fact, I don’t eat of lot of this stuff anymore.

But today I couldn’t help it. I opened up each jar, one by one, savouring each one, remembering the weird and wonderful flavours. Remembering my childhood favourites – the love letters!

After dinner and dessert, my grandmother, the oldest and most senior in our family, made all the little grandchildren and great-grandchildren line up to receive an ang pow.

When Callum received his, he crept up to me with a very worried look on his face. He whispered, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I think Ah Tai forgot to put money in this ang pow! Should I tell her before everyone finds out?”

I had to laugh. “Dude. She’s giving you PAPER MONEY OK?”

Ah, it was a great evening.

A few weeks ago, I was in Singapore and by complete co-incidence, so was the incredibly popular Malaysian blogger, Kenny Sia.

We finally had the chance to meet up! Unfortunately, our individual schedules were pretty full and we only managed to chat for a few minutes. I would have loved to catch up over coffee – but it was not to be. Nevertheless, I was not disappointed. He is exactly like I imagined him from his blog!

Kenny writes about his adventures of being a regular, down-to-earth, 20-something Asian guy, feeling and living life to the full. From political satire, to random toilet humour, to extraordinary life experiences – his topics always put a smile on my face.

I love the fact that, although I am not Malaysian and I often do not understand some of the lingo or current affairs of Malaysia… nonetheless, he’ll just get straight to the point, and make me double over with laughter. Or, I might find myself peering a little closer at his photo-documentary-style account of some astonishing adventure.

His posts are superbly crafted. Whether he’s aiming for pure entertainment value, random hysterics, controversy, a cute little story, or a moment of thought – he seems to do it with a very natural and unique style, a very Kenny Sia style. He’s a very clever blogger, and he deserves the astonishing and loyal readership he has.

Although I don’t really know him on a personal level, I see him as a very real human, not “one of the world’s most popular bloggers”.

I know he has lived in Perth, my home town, and studied at the same university I did. I know his sister, and his nephew and nieces. I know about his father’s sickness and passing.

Kenny is tuned into all that life has to offer, and shows it to the world in his own, unique way. He’s brave enough to show us his heart, and to poke fun of his own celebrity.

So here are a few of my favourite Kenny Sia posts:

Three Years – where he writes a very touching letter to his late father.

Twenty Four – where he makes an enjoyable lists of things he has done at the age of 24. And you can’t help but be inspired to make a similar list.

The Making Of Mister Potato’s ‘Fish’ – the weird and wonderful life of being a blog celebrity. Hilarious strangeness.

Underwater Photography – a simple but charming commentary of scuba diving, which made me chuckle.

Kuala Lumpur International Marathon 2006 – where he has a crazy idea and pursues it. He admits he is overweight, yet enters and FINISHES a 42km marathon, with a very entertaining commentary.

I am actually looking forward to the time Kenny has kids. I am sure that his take on fatherhood and that amazing adventure of parenting will surely be the most entertaining yet!

Cheers Kenny!

Last night, 35 of my closest friends joined me to celebrate my birthday over a banquet dinner. I had such a wonderful time talking to everyone, laughing, chatting, eating, floating, taking pictures and just being me.

The company of great friends is priceless indeed.

I thought the photo above was just too cute – the lovely Annika and Ian are crouching down, because they’re actually a full head taller than me!

We stretched along one wall of the restaurant, spread over 3 long, narrow tables!

As with most large group dinners with a mixture of friends, everyone didn’t get a chance to mingle very much, so I was toying with the idea of making everyone shuffle along – speed dating style. But the food came out! So everyone was too busy eating.

My outfit for the evening.

Dress: Silk Smock Dress from Obvious
Earrings: From Pinc
Legs: Beige Fishnet Stockings
Shoes: Black pumps

There’s a few more pics at my “Doing The Karen Cheng” Facebook Group.

I was actually planning to wear another dress that I specially bought for the occasion, but I ended up wearing that dress to my other birthday function in Singapore.

I’m also sporting my new birthday present! We decided to invest in a DSLR Nikon D80 with a very yummy 18-135mm lens.

It’s a tad heavier than my little Canon A700, but I’m completely loving it!!

We don’t usually take our kids to the movies!

With my two boys and their insurmountable fountain of energy, going out to the movies is rather unwise. Think about it – jumping on the seats, running down the aisles, crawling under seats, shouting, laughing and carrying on like wet market vendors.

We prefer to have our own movie nights at home, with a rented DVD, homemade tacos, hot popcorn, orange juice and chocolate muffins. Mmmm.

But sometimes, seeing a movie on the big screen, with all the ritual of getting there, does make a nice change. And because it was the school holidays, winter, pouring with rain outside, and well, we were feeling lazy… we thought what the heck. And Sean has never been to the movies.

We watched Kung Fu Panda, and omg, it was so cool. We laughed and laughed. We all enjoyed it so much. And my boys actually stayed in their seats throughout the whole movie!

It was such a nice way to spend the afternoon. I was surprised. My husband and I were trying to teach the boys a bit about animation appreciation – story telling, art direction, animation. But they just wanted to do kung fu kicks.

I give it five stars. I was indeed “blinded by its awesomeness”. Haha.

Back in May, I began to think about my upcoming 30th birthday, and how I would like to celebrate it.

My first thought was – I WANT A BIG PARTY!

I wrote up a list of all the people I would love to celebrate with – family, extended family, close friends, family friends, old high school friends, old colleagues, mother-friends… and my list was a shocking 120 people.

120 people x $50 per head = $6000! Gah! I couldn’t afford that! It was like organising a wedding! So I had to cut down significantly. And I decided to split it up and have two birthday dinners.

One for family members, which will be held at my parent’s house. I love big family dinners! My extended family and my husband’s family comes to a total of 40 people.

And one for my close friends. Total of 50 people.

I picked a gorgeous, stylish Indian restaurant. The food is amazing, the set banquet prices are reasonable, the atmosphere is fantastic, and I get a semi-private dining area. I’ve asked all my friends for No Presents, but if they could so kindly give a gift towards the dinner.

As my husband and I worked out the details of money, I had a really hard time getting over the cultural oddity of this concept – inviting someone to your birthday dinner and asking them to pay for themselves??

The Chinese Daughter in me was spinning tornadoes in my head. If my father heard about this, he would be so offended! What an insult! How dare I discuss such things on an invitation! How dare I treat my friends in this way? What kind of birthday celebration is this?!

Ah, well. The custom is really common here in Australia. My friends are all pretty forward thinking and I’m sure they would all laugh at me if I tried to pay for them! I don’t need presents anyway. I just want to have all my wonderful friends in one place!

So the invites have been designed, printed and sent!!!

It’s all happening!!

I woke to the sound of little feet stampeding down the hallway. My boys ran into the room, jumped onto my bed and shouted HAPPY MOTHER’S DAAAAY, covering me with kisses, giggles and cuddles. It was all very cute.

They told me I was NOT ALLOWED to get out of bed, and that I HAD TO eat breakfast in bed. They were very persuasive about it, especially with their little frowns and waggling fingers. But I hate eating in bed. I convinced them that eating in bed would be a bad idea, because ants will crawl under the covers and bite me – so they let me eat breakfast on the couch instead.

From the boys in my life, I received Ugg boots, a bunch of flowers, a sunflower plant, and a photo frame. We went out in the morning, out for lunch, came home for a 2 HOUR nap, then had dinner at my parent’s place. We had a lovely day!

I organised a Girl’s Night Out dinner for all the mum’s at my son’s pre-primary school class.

We had 14 women turn up! It was sooooo much fun! I had such a great time. I can’t believe how lovely everyone is. I’m on this crazy high from being surrounded by so many nice women!

We laughed so much. First everyone rocked up with LOTS OF RED WINE. Then we giggled at each other – because you know, we’ve never seen each other in nice clothes, makeup and high heel shoes. Then we went into hysterics as we swapped stories about how our children insisted on dressing us, choosing our clothes and jewellery.

We were there for almost 4 hours. Talking, laughing, eating, drinking. We were put on a long table, and I made everyone shuffle seats to mingle and chat to others. Most of us ordered the set banquet and we just shared everything. It was great!

Best parts of the evening : The girly and motherly bonding. Strengthening a little community and forming friendships that will last a lifetime. Getting to know the parents of the kids that my kids will hang out with. Making friends with mothers in my area. And the HILARIOUS stories!

I got a few emails from women asking how I organised it, as they were inspired to do the same for the mums in their kid’s class. It was really simple! I completely recommend it!

I chose the time, date, place and format.
I printed out a text-only invite on coloured paper.
I popped them into all the children’s take-home pigeonholes.
I made a booking in a restaurant for 10 people.
The mum’s had to RSVP by the day before.
I would let the restaurant know the final numbers on the afternoon of the dinner.
That was it.

I worked out that the Friday night before Mother’s Day would best result in husband’s agreeing to babysit the kids.

I chose a popular restaurant that was local. It was pretty much 2 minutes drive from everyone’s house. Lots of women car pooled or got dropped off.

I also refrained from making it into a BIG EVENT. A big event with a set programme, door prizes, theme or whatever, usually expects the person to invest a lot of thought into it, they will um and ah about it, and then usually decide that it’s all just too hard.

I just wanted the evening to be A SIMPLE DINNER, COME AS YOU ARE.

Plus it meant, less organising for me!

Rockingham has a nice stretch of beach, lots of parks and playgrounds, a strip of cafes, a shopping centre, some nice walking trails, lookouts and lovely coastal views – it’s small and simple, and it’s only 30 minutes out of town.

Our objective for this trip was : hang out at a beach and sit in a cafe.

^ We arrived and ate lunch at a random cafe. As I was taking the photo, I said coolly, “Sean. I’d like you to put down that knife, right now.” Look at that hilarious expression on his face!

^ We took a little drive along the coast. Walked along some bush tracks, found some look outs.

We found a sheltered beach. The water was so still. The kids hopped about in the rock pools. I grimaced at the fact that the boys had no shoes on, but hey I did the same when I was a kid.

^ I sat in the shade and rearranged shells on the beach. Very therapeutic.

^ The boys went for a walk and found ingredients for Poh Poh’s (grandma) Chinese soups.

^ They also found a HUGE bundle of rope, which they dragged back to show me. “We found some treasure!”

^ My husband found a piece of wood, tangled amongst the seaweed. I suggested that he should tie some of the rope on it, and make a wake board thing.

And lo and behold, we all had the most glorious day trip ever!!

What I love about being in a small community, is that it feels like one big family.

You feel like you’re a part of something big. You go about your day and everyone knows who you are, everyone knows a bit about you, everyone looks out for you, and everyone accepts you.

It puts your life into a larger context. It gives you meaning. You forget about yourself. Your silly little problems. Your layers of burdens that revolve around you you you.

It takes us beyond ourselves and out of the present moment.

This year, as my sons begin to grow into little people, I have this burning desire to create a community for them. After all, I grew up in a big family and a strong community too.

I want to help my kids understand that sure, the walls of our immediate family are important, but there is a whole world out there. A world where a whole lot of people need a whole lot of help and love.

These last few days, I’ve been to a camp run by my church.  I got to know a bunch of people, whom I wouldn’t have otherwise met. And hey, they’re actually ok. I played team games with them. I washed dishes and cleaned floors with them. I laughed and cried with them.

They’ve inspired me in more ways than they will know.

For the first week, we’ll be away at a camp for families and young people. We’ll be gone for 5 days and 4 nights. I’ll be sleeping on a mattress, on the floor, in a dormitory, with my two boys.

I’ve volunteered to organise some art and craft sessions for the children’s programme. I’ve been told to expect 20 kids, between the ages of 3 – 10 years old. How fun!

The second week coincides with my husband’s holidays, so we’ll be filling our days with outings, trips to the beach, play dates, picnics and other fun stuff.

I’m sure it’ll be all over in the blink of an eye. And suddenly my kids will be grown up and leaving home.

Savour it while it lasts!