HUZZAH.

My postcards to Texas, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland have finally reached their respective addressees!

Surprisingly, I am actually anticipating the first day of Chinese New Year celebrations, but not for the reasons you may be thinking. I typically dread the social customs associated during this festive Chinese season because:

1. Chinese custom, or rather, my father, dictates that I engage in small talk with my frightful Chinese-speaking-only relatives who continue to converse with me in a dialect that leaves me feeling utterly befuddle, despite repeatedly telling them I do not understand a single word that they are uttering, accompanied by mindless gesturing.

But hey its a custom, not a rule.

2. Having to answer questions about my personal life from Nosy Rosy relatives and their friends, ranging from the educational institution that I am currently studying in, to the state of my marital status. Hopefully, my sister's change in her status would distract them their usual torturous interrogations directed at me.

3. Having no one operating on my intellectual wavelength who can carry out appropriate intellectual/social conversations/gossip with me, forcing me to retreat to the corner of the living room and burying my nose in a book, much to the chagrin and annoyance of my traditional Chinese father who belittles and looks down on my love for books. I'm sorry, but I cannot possibly find a single Chinese relative in the Juan clan who has ever read Jean Sasson or Jodi Picoult to keep me amused. And, most of my relatives are at least 30 years old and too busy engaging in "adult-talk" to want to talk to me about the discipline of psychology or the state of women in Middle East with the lack of enforced rights to protect them from abusive and backward husbands who, sadly misinterpret the Koran in ways that would surely disappoint Allah himself.

4. Being forced to face fattening, calorie-laden Chinese New Year goodies that will time and time again, put my new year resolution to the test.

5. Having your ultra-conservative Bible-beating aunt bring her flock of friends from church and having them preach to me about the sorrows of atheism, the joys of the Bible because listening to the Word of God brings peace to my empty soul, and subsequently culminating with them blessing my siblings and I with what they claim to be holy water. To which I always tell my aunt that the Bible cannot be fully taken to heart because the Bible was written by Man and not God himself. Since Men are flawed and biased, it is likely that the version of accounts in the Bible are flawed and biased themselves. The double whammy here is that we can neither prove nor disprove that the events in the Bible are true because the men who wrote it are dead. Without scientific and/or probable justification to prove that the Bible is either true or false, the Bible can essentially be considered moot at this point in time.

I think my aunt banned me from going to her church when I first told her that 5 years ago.

However, I'm somewhat looking forward to Monday only because of the fact that I intend to wear the traditional Nepalese costume I bought in Nepal to wear.

And instead of saying gong xi fa cai, I'm going to greet everyone with Namaste.

My aim here is to scandalize the bejesus out of my traditional Chinese relatives by wearing clothes of another country and culture in Southeast Asia, rather than a nice cheongsam.

I positively cannot wait gaze upon the looks of horror/jealousy on their faces as they gaze at my adoring costume.

Aren't I positively delightful? That's what you get for being the black sheep in the family. Hear me bleep!

On a completely unrelated side note, when is my father ever going to leave the living room so that I can walk on the elliptical machine and watch Harry Potter at the same time? He's been sitting there for over an hour by himself, answering the phone when it rings and spewing a string of curse words into the phone every two minutes that is actually very disconcerting. I have just caved in, and somewhat binged on a tosh of junk food, much to my annoyance and am fully intending to glue my butt to the elliptical machine for the next hour and a half.