The CNY Journey Around the historical City in 5 hours, with bicycles.

February 13, 2008

CNY used to be so much fun. Well, the feel is always different when you are younger and its even more different when you get older. It became even worst after you are married. You get loads of Ang Pows (red packets) when you are just a kid, the saham jatuh after you became a teen until you passed adult age.

After you are married, it is your turn to give ang pow. So it’s kinda like a payback time. What goes around comes around aight? But today I am not going to talk about depressing part of the festival. Let’s just reminisce the good old days of CNY ok? As I was saying, we used to have loads of fun during CNY. Since our ang pow collection is depreciating year after year during our teenage years, my friends and I became quite aggressive in our pursuit for more ang pows.

No, this is not a cheap prequel to Will Smith’s Pursuit of Happyness movie although the more ang pow money we get is indirectly translated to another version of Happyness to us. Anyway this was what we did. We organized an expedition and we cycled to every of our classmate’s house in the 3rd day of CNY. If I am not mistaken, there were 10 of us cycling and I have the worst bicycle of all.

My old rusty environmental friendly BMW (aka BMX) that was collecting dust for more than 5 years. Every one else was riding their mountain or racing bikes. So you can imagine how I managed keep up with their pace, NOT. Try racing with a Proton Saga against a Ferrari then you will know what I mean. My BMX is not meant for long distance and it is a miracle that I manage to push it to its limits. Even though it did not rained during our expedition but I always appeared as if I dip myself in a swimming pool because my shirt is always soaked with sweat by the time we reach our destination.

It wasn’t a pleasant sight to wish some one Kong Hei Fatt Choy looking like a scuba diver in front of their doorsteps. Fortunately, I wasn’t dressed in black. We formed a long cycling line but at least we did not act like a bunch of morons on the road like mat rempits. Well, riding bicycle is good mah. We don’t have to worry about petrol but fuel was dirt cheap a decade ago anyway.

Cycling is also good because it does not burn petrol while polluting the environment. To keep our bike moving, we burn our calories. Those were the good old days before most of us got our driving and horse riding license a year later. Bicycle riding slowly being upgraded to motorcycling expedition. Some how I felt things became different although we can reach our destination faster and with lesser sweat.

But that’s probably the reason it wasn’t fun anymore because we did not put much effort in reaching our destination like we did with our bicycles. In the end of the day, it wasn’t the ang pows that satisfy us the most. It was the togetherness and the effort we put in reaching our destination that makes it memorable (although I did not have the time to look around at my surroundings because I was too busy heckling my BMX to death).

Technorati Tags: memories, CNY, bicycle, teenagers, school, ang pow, red packet

Posted in Personal