KUNG HEI FAT CHOI ("Happy Chinese New Year" in Cantonese)! GONG XI FA CAI ("Happy Chinese New Year" in Mandarin)! Today is the start of the Year of the Goat. I've also heard people calling it the Year of the Ram and Year of the Black Sheep as well so I'm not entirely sure which is correct!

Anyway, this is probably the most celebrated season of the year here in Hong Kong. Practically everything — offices, retail shops, supermarkets, and most restaurants — shuts down for at least 4 days and locals spend time with family and close friends. Children and any unmarried folks go around collecting "lai see" (red packets containing money) from the married folks and elders.

We had Christina and Pattra over for dinner last night. I baked some ham, Christina made some curry beef brisket (delicious Thai style!), and we had Pina make some garlic, soy-sauce prawns. Yes, it was kind of a weird combination but we enjoyed all of it. We also had some "lin gou" (Chinese rice cakes) that Pina fried up for us with taro and a bit of batter (apparently, Singaporean style). After dinner we watched the "Catch Me if You Can" DVD that Pattra brought over.

Gwen and I are just enjoying the extra time off with Justin. We've also been catching up on watching movies. Since last Wednesday, I've rented a bunch of DVDs from Blockbuster and we've seen "Minority Report", "The Sum of All Fears", "A Beautiful Mind", "Signs", and "Star Wars - Episode 2". Tonight I returned 3 DVDs and rented out "High Crimes" and "Austin Powers Goldmember". We also bought an ex-rental copy of "Monsters, Inc." for Justin!