2-18-15
In a
short while, Leona is going back to Tan-Zih to the market for final Lunar New
Year foodstuff. She wants to go back to buy
intestines. I like to go for the holiday bustle; I could take some
photos for Facebook. But she prefers to go alone. I’ll go ride my bike.
I spent
three hours cleaning the window and mailboxes in our condo’s lobby. I also
chipped twenty years of tape off the walls. People put things up but don’t
clean it when they take it down. I polished the stainless steel around the
first floor elevators.
I Bcc’ed
a video of a flash mob singing at the Ban-Chao train station to almost everyone
on my johnnyshortwave e-mail list and wished all a Happy Lunar New Year.
2-19-15
The
firecrackers have been being lit in Taichung since last evening as Lunar New
Year manifests itself. Leona's sister asked her over the phone why she was
doing so much New year food shopping when there was only me and her at home.
Leona just likes the feeling of being one with the New Year at home, a feeling
she missed in New York for twenty years. It is a warm feeling of childhood
memories, just as I must have turkey dinner on Thanksgiving and potato latkes
on Hanukkah, not to mention matzos on Passover. There are many foods we
wouldn't buy all year long that we indulge in for the Lunar New Year week.
Last
evening we were invited to dinner again at Leona's brother's home; usually the
daughter doesn't return home for dinner until the third night. I have no family
here and even if I did, they wouldn't be celebrating this date as the New Year;
for Jews, it would be Yom Kippur in September, the harvest before winter, not
the end of winter as it is in Asia. I celebrate three new years each year.
Isn't that great?
2-23-15
Today is the last day of the
Lunar New year vacation. Most stores will be reopening today accompanied by
superstitious firecracker fire to scare the evil spirits, offerings to
encourage the flow of wealth, simply noise and smoke to me and my cats. 
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