Luni-Solar New Year

So it's day 2 of the Chinese New Year thingy. Not that big a fan of it all, considering that the people that we hardly ever talk to for the rest of the year suddenly feel compelled for one reason or another to meet up and keep up with the pretense of interest and concern. Farcical to the core, but since it is beyond my direct control considering that we are talking about my elders here [respect of elders is relatively inviolable, short of having the said elder doing something so heinous that it will cause the heavens themselves to revulse in horror], there's nothing else to do except to keep my cool and wait out the timer till everything returns to normalcy.

It's funny though. It seems that as each year passes, I find it less and less enticing to keep up with the whole charade that comes with the whole ``Chinese New Year'' experience. House visiting is a chore, and given the swelling numbers of people in general, even visiting the festivals of the according theme is a lacklustre proposition. Or it could just be a sign of the innate dysfunction, but I am really in no mood to over-analyse this whole thing.

It really doesn't help that this year we have the equivalent of four days of wasted time. I'm not sitting around to waste the time though---I'm heading back to the office tomorrow and the day after to get some work done, things that I could probably do at home since I mirror the code I need to work on via my own private code repository. That said, getting that done at home is impossible due to the whole need of humouring those who decide to visit, hence the excuse to make the excursion back to the office, braving the slow circulation of air and lack of air-conditioning to get the uninterrupted time needed to get the work done. I have discharged my duties well for the first two days of the lunar new year, so I don't feel guilty for doing the ``ditching'' thing.

Life has clearly evolved to a new phase. Some time back I was thinking a lot about how to steel and gird myself against the world, to eke out some kind of living on my own and dealing with the ramifications from that choice. A change occurred and soon that single-minded craze started to evolve into something a little warmer and more encompassing, and now I daresay that my perspectives and targets have changed again. I was never really ambitious to begin with, preferring to do live a life akin to the older days where work was just something to do to pay the bills and keep the roof over one's head, and the new choices that were made are further reinforcing this when the limited resource of time is taken into consideration. New things to think about, more worldly things, but not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm being deliberately obtuse because things aren't fully ripe for the telling just yet. Patience.

In a couple of weeks or so I'll be heading off to the US once again for my annual long break, a necessity to ensure that I don't go completely insane given the work load that I have. I'm looking forward to it, but probably with less enthusiasm than what I had started with nearly a year ago when I was mooting the idea.

As I said, a new phase of life.

And now, I should stop, because I'm rambling again. I'm not sure if I want to do that and provide material for people to over-analyse. Till the next update then.