(1) The week before Chinese New Year was full of yakitori and sake. The bacon and vegetable yakitori at Nan-ban-teh (the one at Far East?) is highly recommended.
(2) I've started driving lessons again and am abysmally bad at them (as usual). Ten years from now I'll still be saying that I'm starting driving lessons again, and in the same cause of hopeless optimism.
(3) Happy Chinese New Year! This year I learnt to fold paper cranes.
(4) My grandfather came over to our house for reunion dinner (long story; that side of the family is mildly dysfunctional). He said we had to visit Hainan Island with him before he died so he could show us the jia xiang. The jia xiang is somewhere in the countryside. There are over 20 rooms - I think there are several houses - but only 3 people living there still: his brother's children. One is an odd-jobs man, one a retired teacher, and the other I think one of their wives. They plant vegetables and cultivate chickens (my mom: oh do you make chicken rice?) but only enough for themselves because they're lazy (my grandfather said) and because one can't earn much from selling produce. There is one toilet. He built it; he's been visiting every couple of years or so, and he built it on one of his last visits. It's outside the house and has a septic tank and pump and all. Before he built the toilet, they either dug a hole somewhere or just walked some distance from the house (I gather; he was a little evasive on this point). Now the sewage is pumped outside the jia xiang and left there. My grandfather said he wouldn't invite any of us there if there were no toilet, but now there is, and so we should go.
(5) Over the new year period, I watched (a) a whole bunch of Stephanie Sun music videos, (b) Fearless (full of China pride and improbable honour), (c) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (on DVD) (a little too clever in parts, but excellent overall), (d) The Pianist, (e) all of the five minutes of Batman Begins.
(6) The horoscope for monkeys born in 1980 (the big one on the pillar at Bugis, where all the Chinese temples are) says to stay away from alcohol and women this year.