It's Chinese New Year and Causeway Bay is party central. The Victoria Park Festival has begun where there are rows and rows of toys, rooster theme stuff, and of course the famous flower market.

I'll post more photos of the festival shortly. But it's very difficult to really capture how many people have descended upon CWB except LOTS O' PEOPLE EVERYWHERE. There's a 3 days public holiday and most people have just taken the whole week off. With end of the year sales and CWB being shopping mecca, you can only imagine the density of people who are on holiday just hanging out, shopping for new clothes(you have to wear new clothes/shoes on the first day of the new year), flowers(each flower has a significance for what kind of virtue you want upon yourself or your family) and chocolates/fruits for visiting gifts. Also since it's the end of the year there are SO MANY sales because it's a bad omen for your business to keep goods from last year. So I've been eyeing some things to buy on New Year's Eve when they slash prices to 75-80% off. There are so many traditions for the new year that Jeff is kind of overwhelmed but he has been diligent about finding out we need to do.

So over the next few days we'll be eating out alot with relatives, I'm going to get a new pair of shoes since it's a tradition(CWB is shoe heaven), and probably have to go to the gym more since there will be lots of sweets served over the whole week. Oh God, please help me from gaining the weight I just lost... 45lbs and counting...

I'll post more photos and traditions as I encounter them. Oh btw, SFGATE has a story on some traditions going on in San Francisco's Chinatown.

Happy chinese new year everyone!

PS: It's my mom's 60th birthday the day of Chinese New Year. Happy birthday mom!!!!