So every year, the estate council organises a few events like Kampong night, Durian night and the Lantern Festival celebration to bring the residents together for a fun time. My Dad recently joined the residents association so it was pretty much a must for me to turn up. Although I was significantly late and everything had more or less finished, it really brought back many memories of when I was a child celebrating the festival.
I was in a Chinese primary school, which means that only the Chinese language was taught there and not the other Singapore languages like my native language, Tamil. Being in that school I attended the annual lantern festivals which were really pretty fun. I remember getting so frustrated one year when I thought I couldn't go - I misplaced my ticket. But it all turned out fine. I also remember walking around the neighbourhood with the other kids (as part of the estate's events) carrying our colourful lanterns, and following the leader, who would be holding up something like this:
Trying to keep the candle alight and jalan-jalan-ing around the hood was so exciting. I looked forward to it every year. It was also a tradition of ours to have a sort of bonfire after the walk, in the neighbourhood playground, with old paper and dried leaves. Pretty sure it wasn't the best idea to be burning all that stuff, but we were kids so it was alright. Caught a couple of kids in the act when I was there yesterday.
One thing I was never a fan of was mooncakes, although everyone else seems to love them. The only ones I actually liked were the Champagne ones from Raffles Hotel that my colleague bought for us. Very fancy, I know. Just never got the appeal. But here are some from last night.
Since I was late I didn't manage to snap any pictures of the lanterns, but I'll make sure I get to that next year!
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