Year of the Water Rabbit just around the corner

 The Chinese community from all over the world would welcome the Year of the Water Rabbit in 2023. The Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean communities would celebrate the New Year as well in their unique ways through food, dance, and honouring the elderly, particularly our parents. Here in Malaysia, the Lion Dance culture has evolved to include acrobatic performances. The Lion Dance societies and clubs have included girls and boys from different racial backgrounds (Malay, Chinese, and Indian). Watch HERE. I drove to KLIA airport happily to welcome my sister (who works in Singapore) home. Watched the Missing Menu together with my mum and sister. A Hakka Cook Book author wrote about the Missing Menu after watching it on Netflix HERE. A quick trip to Pudu Ria Florist on the last two weekends before the Chinese New Year celebration begins on 22 January 2023 in Malaysia, was needed to pick up my two pots of Kalanchoe flowers. Managed to take a quick picture of their center-stage display of cartoonish rabbits and bigger pots of flowers before hurrying back to my car. I bought a potted Phalaenopsis orchid before at this Florist and one of their friendly employees gave me a good tip on how to maintain this orchid plant. Pudu Ria Florist's website can be found HERE. Wish this florist had a wheel-chair-friendly cafe and toilets else I would have brought my mum here for breakfast. We started our journey back to Segamat, Johor on Friday morning. This year I exited the North-South Plus highway through Tangkak. We stopped for lunch at a Bak Kut Teh restaurant in Tangkak named FA LAI which has been blogged about by Johor Kaki. We were lucky enough to be served the final claypot soup dish of the day and side dishes of steamed chicken feet which we wolved down with bowls of rice (as pictured below):- 

Collected freshly plucked Pomelo (Giant Grapefruits I call them) from my mother's friends Mr and Mrs Tan who operate a fruit orchard in Jementah. They grew durian trees, the Musang King variety and generously gave us some to sample. I fell in love again with cold, creamy durian. Really tasted like ice-cream! The view of the Ledang mountains from Jementah (as pictured above) always amazes me. The red pineapple which was grown for decorative purpose and will be offered to the deities during prayers, added to the festive vibe of Chinese New Year although it will be a very quiet welcoming of the Water Rabbit for me and my family in 2023.

A New Beginning and Living with the Cobra

There's a beautiful score in the movie "The Last Samurai" which I came across during the Covid-19 lockdown period. I would listen to this score before my online classes at IUMW started. There are a few lessons from Mother Nature and her creations that are contained in the teachings of the Buddha and told through stories by Buddhist monks, one of whom is the late Ajahn Chah. He has a few chapters which are available HERE, including the Chapter on Living with the Cobra, a paragraph of which is extracted below for further contemplation:-

So we say that mental activity is like the deadly poisonous cobra. 

If we don't interfere with a cobra, it simply goes its own way. 

Even though it may be extremely poisonous, we are not affected by it; 

we don't go near it or take hold of it, and it doesn't bite us. 

The cobra does what is natural for a cobra to do. That's the way it is. 

If you are clever you'll leave it alone. And so you let be that which is good. 

You also let be that which is not good - let it be according to its own nature. 

Let be your liking and your disliking, the same way as you don't interfere with the cobra.

Watching Sunrise again in order to move on to the next chapters of my life.  This is what I need to do soon through traveling. I really do not wish to be stuck in a bad mood for 40 Years else I end up looking like this grumpy character from Steel Magnolias below:-