CNY Celebration

Today, our boss personally handed out our Chinese New Year bonuses in red packets. When he gave me mine, he told me to work hard – not that he’s implying that I’m a slacker, it’s just that I’ve only been a month in the company and should not have a bonus. But he explained last week that as a courtesy to me, he will still give me a full bonus so that I won’t feel bad that everyone else had one except for me. Aww. He’s such a nice guy, really.

He also ordered food for our Chinese New Year feast – fried rice, satay, fried noodles, pork knuckle (known as crispy pata to Pinoy folks, but without the signature soy sauce and vinegar dip), chili chicken, chili crab, pepper crab, some greens, and cans of chilled tea or Coke or beer (I had none of them, I drank a can of pineapple juice that I brought with me instead). My colleague Ah Fatt kept piling cracked crabs on my plate so I was forced to eat them. They were quite nice, though. By the way, “nice” is Singapore’s way of saying “delicious.” Kinda weird, but I’ve gotten used to it. Now I know to nod when I eat something and someone asks me, “nice?”

Then our boss decided to raffle off the items in all the gift packages he got from clients. There were 34 items, so each of us would have two prizes each. I was eyeing the Ferrero chocolates or abalone (I’m just curious what it tastes like and why one small can costs about 50 dollars), but when I drew my numbers – 1 and 28, I found it funny that #1 was a box of pineapple cookies while #28 was a can of pineapple slices. Is this the law of attraction effect of my pineapple juice diet? XD

Happy Chinese New Year!