This past week revolved pretty much around the Chinese New Year, it’s preparations and the festivities. Needless to say there was plenty to do and arranging the daily activities with all the preparations as well as launch of the Project Wear and Tear, not to mention our blog’s redesign. It was one helluva week. Just the other day I was asking my brother if he has busy day at school forgetting that it was already Saturday. But Project Wear and Tear has kicked off nicely and it’s very exciting to see people from all over the world participating in the project with such an enthusiasm. Big Like.

But as I hinted last week, this article is pretty much a Chinese New Year’s edition. The Year Of the Golden Rabbit has already kicked off and what is said to be a year of prosperity and health has started really nicely. The Chinese New Year is naturally all about reunion and families coming together to celebrate the past and upcoming years with good food, traditions such as ang paws (red envelopes) and occasional gambling. Everyone’s generally in a good mood and people are enjoying themselves, much like with the Western holidays. So the past few days we’ve cruised around meeting relatives and two things have remained the same, the jeans and me carrying Maxwell. Maxwell’s my wingman, you know like Batman has Robin and all.

While not carrying around Maxwell, I might have picked up a tortoise in case I came across one. Please note that it was allowed to carry the tortoise and I did not bully him/her. Actually this was probably the first time I have carried a tortoise of this size before. Lucky I was a bit more cautious than a little girl who just happened to drop the tortoise. No pictures of the situation and the tortoise is fine, just got a scare of a lifetime I suppose.

I might have mentioned lanterns’ significance with the Chinese New Year on the blog before, but these lanterns that repel evil are as traditional as Chinese New Year itself. What I really love is the decorations they put up at temples during this time. Really elaborate lantern decorations. These lanterns are from Thean Hou Temple, to which we’ll get back to a bit later in the post.

Another tradition as famous as lanterns, (probably even more famous) is the lion dance. A little history on the lion dance. According to the ever reliable Wikipedia, “the story goes that once upon a time a monk had a dream in which there were many sorrows and evils plaguing the land. The monk prayed and asked the gods how he could prevent these evils from occurring. The gods told him that a lion would protect them and fight back the evils. The Chinese people had never see a lion before, but had heard stories that the lion was the king of all the other animals, so the monk combined all the lucky or magical animals he could think of and so made a lion.” This Chinese New Year I got in the middle of more than one lion dance, more like three. Hopefully that’s an auspicious sign.

If you look in closely you might recognize the lion these lovely ladies are posing with.

Usually people want to pat the lion and take pictures with him/her but this time it was the lions and their entourage that wanted to take a picture with me. Hopefully another auspicious sign.

I have visited many temples in Malaysia but one that for some reason I have missed out until now is the Thean Hou temple in Kuala Lumpur dedicated to Goddess Thean Hou (The Heavenly Mother). Needless to say the temple was pretty impressive in all of its awesomeness. These pictures usually drain your memory card and I had to think for a long time what pictures I would post on the blog, but here are few.

My lovely sister in law.

Another lion.

The Copper Label Momotaro Jeans are enjoying their last days/week of action before retirement. Yes, I said it 55 weeks and we’re closing in on retirement of this project to give space to a new project that will commence as soon as the jeans reach my residence in Malaysia. That will definitely be an awesome project not only because the jeans look dope, but also because the project is part of Project Wear and Tear, which has kicked off just to say nicely. So let’s see what this week brings along, but let me just say that the Malaysian weather tests the jeans like Finnish weather seldom does. I’m out, peace…