Happy Chinese New Year! This is, of course, posted late as normal. Year of the Sheep/Goat – something that still hasn’t been figured out and since it’s not my year… I’m not worried so much. For Chinese New Year on the Wednesday, I ended up planning my evening to end up at the Chinese Temple out at Bonnyrigg. The last time I was there, it all started at 12 but it seems the lunar clock (if there is such a thing) operates on a different time. I pulled up at 11:55 pm and found myself the closest parking spot to the temple I’ve ever found and thought, I’m the luckiest guy on earth, but clearly later on, I realised how unlucky I was and that people were LEAVING rather than arriving at that time.
I bumped into my cousin whilst I was there and she informed me that all the festivities (lion dancing and fire crackers) were all done at 11:30 pm for the children. The children. The children that were still running around after midnight. In any case, we did miss the festivities, although, there was a decision to walk around the grounds and found ourselves huddling with strangers all looking at an empty patch of grass. Spectacularly enough, fireworks! So it wasn’t all bad!
So then on the weekend, I was determined to see some firecrackers. There were some at Chatswood on Saturday, but it was a slightly miserable day, so then I found http://www.jinwukoon.com.au/ who even have a google calendar of their events! One was listed with firecrackers! We turned up at 2 pm as per the time on the calendar. Nothing was going on at the Sussex Centre at all! We wandered through and found a poster saying that there was Lion Dancers at 1pm. Just great. Another event where we’ve just missed the main event! A bit gutted, I decided I needed to have some congee at Super Bowl and regroup my thoughts before finding out where else we could go to see some of the action. Half way through lunch, lions approach and it seems that people were setting up the firecrackers! It was pretty good being so close. Deafening too.
So this whole Chinese New Year period has been pretty good really =)