Chinese New Year is coming up

On February 5th/6th, it's Chinese New Year and everyone is getting excited. Everywhere is being decorated, the streets are adorned with lanterns, and the whole city glows in red colors. People are standing in long queues to buy gold, usually engraved with a pig, the animal of the year. Even the supermarkets are operating at full speed. Our Sheng Siong supermarket has even added tents to accommodate all the cookie tins, canned abalone, pig plush toys, and lucky bamboo. The shelves are stacked with many small colorful packets that are filled with money or sweets and then brought to visit family members. Willow kittens are also popular, and the more kittens hanging on the branches, the more luck there will be in the new year. We are still here for Chinese New Year and are very happy about it. I will definitely report more on that later. For now, we are very curious about how Chinatown looks like, which we will visit again in the next few days.

And otherwise: unfortunately, I've been sick for two weeks and since yesterday my tonsils are swollen. Alex had caught it two weeks before. Fortunately, the little mouse has been spared so far. Hopefully, I'll get better soon because Alex only has a few more workdays left and then we would like to explore the surroundings of Singapore. There are supposed to be great little islands that we might explore by bike and we are really looking forward to it. Everything is prepared for the cruise as well. Our Indian visas have been approved at least. It wasn't easy to get Jakob to have a neutral expression on his face for the photos 😄