-

The lousy-ass journey called growing up has officially also come to include killing most of the fun associated with CNY. Maybe its the lack of kids screaming and running around, or that 21 years of eating all them CNY goodies has finally begun to lose its appeal, or we've become so accustomed to the usual, yearly procedures that await us the moment the festive season hits -- greetings, thank yous, questions like "so when are you getting married?", "are you working yet?", "where you gonna work at?", lunch/ dinner (with probably the same dishes as last year's), hours of lazing around and mini 'lil photo shoots.

Along the way we've come to realise that the amount of money you get from angbaos is never gonna go above a certain amount - so you give up on the race of arriving early to wait for relatives to hand them to you, and opening them all as soon as you get home.

And when you're old enough so that meeting each other isn't just about rolling around on the floor and giggling about half chipped nail polish, small talk only lasts so long before you turn back to your phone for the next few hours of the visit. 

No wonder I never understood why my mother always seemed so indifferent to CNY when I was younger hahahhahaha.