Ushering the Year of the Water Dragon

Marites Allen's Horoscope Forecast
from National Bookstore
and dog sign lucky charm bracelet.

I was born under the year of the Metal Dragon.  I have come to find interest in the Chinese way of ushering in their New Year back when the much loved geomancer Paul Lau was still alive back in the 1990's.  Sadly he died in 2000 while in his hotel room at the Mandarin Oriental Manila.  Paul Lau had this certain aura in him that made the Feng Shui, the Chinese Horoscope and the Chinese New Year fun to take part in.

This year, with no definite geomancer or feng shui expert to follow I was captured by the weeklong Chinese New Year episode of Kris TV (hosted by Ms. Kris Aquino) where they tackled an assortment of ways to ward of negative energies, attract positive energy, preparations to do before the year of the water dragon steps in coupled with certain guests that are under the Chinese Zodiac sign they were discussing for that day.  I was able to watch the episode where the President and CEO of World of Feng Shui Philippines, Ms. Marites Allen guested. I particularly remember her advise to squeeze one kalamansi as hard as you can and throw it over your left shoulder over running water (river, stream, creek or whatever) to get rid of the negativity.  I was also able to watch the episode when Robert Dans guested and he did hold his stand in his prediction that Ms. Kris Aquino will have a baby girl with Coco Martin in the year of the Dragon.  There were so many matters discussed in just one week as expected as the Chinese Horoscope certainly is a vast topic to handle.


Anyway, this initiated me to do some extra preparations for the Chinese New Year. I did extra cleaning, decluttered our room, washed the blinds, got myself my special bracelet from SM Center.  Jay managed to receive money from a rich acquaintance which he shared with me and my son.  (It is just a couple of new P50 and P20 bills by the way).  We folded it into the Dragon and slid it into the angpao.  Hubby and my son also went to Binondo Jan 21 (Sat) to get Tikoy (sweet ricecake) from Eng Bee Tin.  I was supposed to join them but I still had a lot of cleaning and fixing to do.   Hmmm...I wonder if anyone bothered to ask soil from Uncle Dong's garden.

Come the day before the Chinese New Year, things were a little lighter.  We prepared lumpia and pritik (our version of tikoy wrapped in lumpia wrapper and deep fried) to be cooked in the late afternoon and early evening.  We also had penne in Filipino style spaghetti sauce.  I just found out the pasta is called penne.  We had been calling the recipe spaghetti since we did not know what its called.  Now we know.

Our fruit basket with candies and the traditional angpao.
Angpao means red packet in Min Lin.  In Mandarin it is called hongbao.
Koreans have it too and they call it Sae Bae Don.
Thanks to Wikipedia for that information.

Our special Tikoy and Hopia from Binondo's Eng Bee Tin.

Penne in Filipino style spaghetti sauce

Pritik: Tikoy wrapped in lumpia wrapper and deep fried.

In the evening, there was really not much compared to what we had during New Year's Eve (Dec 31).  Three of us changed into red shirts, my son even went as far as wearing red shorts.  We ate our penne spag, lumpia and pritiik and stayed in tune to ABS-CBN for their Chinese New Year celebration telecast from the Quirino Grandstand.  My hubby also took time to cross over to Uncle Dong next door and share some of our pritik and lumpia.  Before going to bed, my hubby placed a P20 bill in our pockets saying Kung Hei Fat Choi.

Well, Kung Hei Fat Choi everyone!!!  All the things we did were all just for fun.  We may have embraced the Chinese culture with this celebration and have come to love it, but being Christian Catholics, it is still God Almighty who is the center of our lives.  Each year changes in the Chinese culture but for us Catholics, every year is the year of our Lord.  That being said, "Zai Jian" (See you later) everyone and "Hsieh Hsieh"! (Thank you).