Happy New Years

Sunday morning is the first day of Tet (Lunar New Year). Normally, this was the day to visit relatives. The second day of Tet was for friends and third was reserved for teachers. I actually headed over to see my elderly relative yesterday (ngay giao thua). Though they will be 95 later this year, they moved around fairly easily and could take care of household chores. Earlier in the week, they had stumbled and fallen during the night. Luckily they were discharged from the hospital with only some facial bruising. But they looked frailer than usual on Saturday, moving around slowly with a cane. I hoped that in a few weeks they will be back to their old self. I brought over some croissants from Art Is In and we shared a banh trung.

I haven't gone out much over the last several weeks. With snow blanketing the ground and piling up on the branches, Ottawa was pretty when viewed from the inside. But I didn't want to break the illusion by going out and running into challenges with living here. Such as the local LRT breaking down yet again due to ice buildup and amazingly, sustaining more damage during repairs.

I did head out for New Year's Day. Over the last few years, my extended family has not been seeing each other over Christmas. With folks visiting in-laws, it became more convenient for the "main" family to meet up after the Holidays. This year there were some no-shows though. A few cousins were in self-quarantine after a cruise or were sleeping in after partying in Toronto. Lunch was a tasty pot-luck of fried rolls, pasta, charcuterie, chicken, fried rice and an assortment of cookies and Asian jelly desserts.

I wasn't in Toronto myself but I did tune in to a livestream of a NYE concert at History venue. During the pandemic, cover band Dwayne Gretzky had great success with their free NYE streams on Youtube. They were back to a live show but decided to continue with the stream. The management of History should consider hiring Somewherelse, Gretzky's audiovisual team, to broadcast other concerts. They did an impeccable job deploying multiple camera operators. The band also brought their A game with the live chat lauding every singer. But recent addition James Baley really stood out with his electric stage presence.