Happy New Year and 1st World Problem

2014 Chinese New Year Firework at Chicago Navy Pier

Last night, I was watching TV at home. All of a sudden I heard something familiar. In the summer, every Wednesday and Saturday night, Navy Pier has fireworks. Since my place is close by, I can hear fireworks explode. Quick search on Google and found that Navy Pier is having fireworks for Chinese New Year! So, I grab my jacket, tread though all the snow and managed to catch a glimpse of it and shot the video with the phone. Didn't even have my gloves on and it was cold.

Growing up in Hong Kong, I got to celebrate 2 new years. The Gregorian Calendar new year usually is just an extra holiday to nurse the drinking at the New Year's Eve party. Chinese new year on the other hand was a big deal, with lots of family gatherings (i.e. Food) Living in U.S., celebration with family for me now is just a phone call to mom and text message to my brother wishing them a healthy and prosperous year ahead. I got the red packet lucky money (signifies good fortune) from mom back in Christmas when I was home. The only celebration I had this year was a dinner gathering with a couple of Chinese friends from Hong Kong and Singapore, and an American husband of one of the friends (he lived in Singapore for a while, and married a Singaporean, so he is practically Asian). My family had a tradition of having vegetarian meal on New Year's Day. Grandma's wisdom - she thought that with all the family, friend, business gathering, everyone would be eating to much meat and greasy food, so New Year's Day, no meat. We had this tradition as far as I can remember, even after she passed away. So, I also cooked a pot of vegetarian delight. My version is just whatever vegetable I can get from the supermarket and some tofu and bean threads.

So I wish every visitor of this blog a very prosperous, happy and healthy year ahead!

Now back to the 1st world problem. Modern technology, broadband internet connection in particular, allowed me to work from home. This is extremely nice when we are under the effect of the Polar Vortex. But in the past couple of days, the service provider had been having problem, I was forced to brave the cold and head to the office instead.

After 2 days of outage, it seems to be back now. Not a bad way to start a new year.