Golden Pig

This week I have mostly been celebrating Chinese New Year, and this year it is the auspicious year of the Golden Pig. I saw a Golden Pig the other day on the train, she was up to her second knuckle in her nose drilling for gold, then she wiped it on the window, capping off a particularly eventful week on public transport. The Chinese New Year culminates in a big parade down Orchard Road, called Chingay, which is kind of like the Sydney Gay madis gras but without the gay, becaus that is not allowed. This year it is sponsored by the Singapore Tote, which gives me a very convenient segway to mention horse racing and my birthday. Both of which happened a couple of weeks before.
Racing in Singapoo is quite civilized as long as you are prepared to pay a bit of cash to sit in a very large airconditioned stand, which is what we did. We also had free drink, a race programme, a 3 course meal and a free bet voucher. All good except the food, which was some sort of oily orangey piece of pig flavoured road kill for the carnivores and a deep fried ball of mash potato for the non meat eaters.
We had a table reserved for lunch and as it turned out another table reserved for drinking and watching horsies being kicked and hit by little blokes with high pitched voices. The only thing was some fairly unsavoury throat clearing sniffing and snorting going on around us, fortunately with spitting punishable by some sort of punishable punishment over here we didn't get to see the results. It was a mixed day on the punt, my best selections were made at the bar and then later from the menu at the Delhi restaurant in Little India.
Chinese New year is a jolly good time over here, certainly the most festive of the holidays in Singapoo and involves a whole lot of things including lots of eating and drinking and lion dances. The first time you see a lion dance you think, that's interesting, likewise the second time, but by the third you notice the noise. And bugger me there is some noise, it's kind like kids banging drums and cymbals together with no thought about rhythm or from. In fact it is just a whole bunch of kids banging drums and cymbals. When they do it in your office they also expect to get paid for it. Having just been promoted I qualified for a dance to bring in luck and good fortune. It involves tying up a lettuce with a red packet containing cash and two oranges. The lion comes in and pretends to eat the lettuce and the oranges, then chucks lettuce leaves and orange all over the place.
I went to pick this crap up and the cleaner came up to me, to clean up I thought. But in fact she came up to tell me it was bad luck to clean it up before 3 days. Poorest excuse for not doing a job that I have ever heard, but I left the orange lying around just to be sure, but then my boss comes up and starts eating it, so I had to tell him off for eating my good fortune. I am not convinced on the leaving food lying around in the tropics over the weekend without aircon is good luck, the staphylococci I bred didn't look too lucky to me.
Matt the crab has turned out to be something of a hermit, boom tish, something like his mentor in the cricket season. He has also lost 3 legs, which is again a bit like his mentor who is also quite often legless. Interesting thing about crabs is that they can grow their legs back, good skill to have that one.