Chinese New Year has coincided with Australia Day this year so we hosted an Australian style barbeque for our Australian friends and a token Canadian who can do a not too shabby accent.

Everyone was required to bring something Australian. The resulting menu included:

• Smiths Plain Potato Chips (they didn’t know about my Salt ‘n’ Vinegar addiction)
• Orange with the cocktail onions, gherkins, cheese and ham on toothpicks sticking out of it (70s flashback)
• Jatz biscuits with dip (unfortunately not French Onion but we tried)
• Steak
• Potato salad
• Pasta salad
• Damper – an unexpected hit. I’d found the recipe on the internet and baked two loaves
• Caramello Koalas
• Tim Tams
• Pavlova – of course
• Lamingtons – these were home made (not by us)
• VB – not enough according to Mr Shallot. This was partly my fault as this beer is surprisingly expensive here whereas what would normally be considered boutique beer is cheap. I have a theory that most have now acquired the taste for the boutique beers (who wouldn’t at those prices) so they wouldn’t want VB. In this instance, I was wrong as VB was a very popular choice on the day.

So there was a wide assortment of food to munch on while listening to Triple J’s Hottest 100. Once again, I realised I hadn’t heard half the songs and have decided to make more of an effort for this year. Kings of Leon did incredibly well again so there’s another album that will need to be bought.

Chinese New Year has meant that we’ve had Monday through to Wednesday off work. Once again, it’s been a chilly New Year so we’ve spent quite a bit of it indoors and even had to relocate our festivities inside later in the day. We’ve been on a few hikes and my first trial run (an update will be in another post).

According to Chinese beliefs the Year of the Ox means we’ll have 12 months of hard work. I think whatever year it was going to be would have meant the same thing this time around!

Kung Hei Fat Choi! Loosely translates to “congratulations and be prosperous”. I’ll be hearing this around the office for the next few days and giving out red packets (lai see) to my team and all those that are unmarried that come up to me and say “Kung hei fat choi”. According to tradition, this will give both of us good luck. On the 6 February there will be a lion dance going around to each of the floors in my building and eating the hanging lettuce off the office doors for our luck.

I really enjoy this time of the year.