Reunited and we feel so good

If any of you were out late at night yesterday watching a movie somewhere in Penang, you might have noticed an extremely rowdy motley crew ranging from tweenage to kadults in the famed back benches raising a helluva ruckus. Popcorn tossing, candy pelting and petty name calling seems the norm for these barbaric scoundrels but thank goodness, these little heathenish hooligans managed to calm down before the movie started.

Hell I'd have called the police on them! Unfortunately ( much to my everlasting embarassment ) I'm part of that heathenish gang.

Over in our family, we don't ascribe to many of the old-fashioned notions held by other households but we do follow one simple tradition, that is to remain awake till the wee hours of the morning the night before Chinese New Year. Not sure how my cousins and I were conned years back by some conniving elderly relative but for the past decade or so, it's been a sacred yearly tradition to break out the ang pow bank ( hence the need for a banker ) to purchase tickets for our midnight movie marathon.

So after the regular reunion dinner, it's off in a cavalcade of cars to the nearest cineplex. Usually end up struggling to maintain my sanity through whatever unintelligible rubbish the evil moviemakers have cobbled up together for the festive occasion. For the past years, I've sat through numerous mindless Chow Sing Chi fanfests to the Godawful-get-me-out-of-the-cinema-now Himalaya Singh - and now to the slightly more palatable Lady Iron Chef.

You can see how I end up tossing popcorn at my cousins to keep myself amused. Just because I'm one of the eldest doesn't mean I have to maintain dignified decorum, does it?

And then thank God we go for supper where I usually drown myself in endless jugs of saccharine-sweet teh tarik to rid my mind of whatever sickening movie-trash I've been subjected to ( tortured with, more like ). Then over mountains of chappati, we start gossiping yet again - yeah, this family really lives on gossip fodder.


Is it morning yet...
So does it surprise anyone that we're usually all mindlessly groggy in the morning till irrevocably woken up by the deafening cymbals and drums of the approaching lions? :)