singapore-style chinese new year in a foreign land

okayyy so i celebrated chinese new year in a foreign land.

some similarities, some differences.

Similarity 1:
they have steamboat for reunion dinner too, with tofu and mushrooms and fishballs and succulent sweet huge prawns
Difference 1:
i miss home's tanghoon and chicken breast meat and quail eggs and tang-oh veggie and my yummy garlic chilli and the soup and the golden enoki mushrooms.

Similarity 2:
they go around every house and bai nian with 2 mandarin oranges and say 4 worded chinese sayings. (although most of the time it is GONG XI FA CAI GONG XI FA CAI GONG XI FA CAI!)
Difference 2:
they don't do it at the doorstep or the moment we arrive, like how i do it in singapore. they do it only after a while, and then like the elders will take turns to sit at the couch, and after that the young people will go one after another to bai nian. and if you are bai nian-ing to your own parents, you have to kneel down.

Similarity 3:
all the host's houses have lots of food.
difference 3:
different from the food we have during new year in singapore, like the cookies, and bak kwa, and my fave prawn roll crackers, and for my family curry and pig's organ soup and mushrooms with fa cai, the houses had preserved plums etc, and popiah and satay and lontong and sushi and home made sharks fin soup and kway chap. and yu sheng. which my family never has for cny

difference 4
the shows they watch on tv are chinese satellite tv, i.e. all the china channels, so it's a lot of atmosphere. we actually hear chinese new year songs playing on the tv on 初一, but the difference is that the way people from china (and taiwan and hong kong at that), celebrate chinese new year very very differently from singapore, so it's hard to relate at times.

difference 5.
i have no holiday today :( but NEH MIND. tmr is PAY DAY. :D