#229
Rockstar: Look! It says moon cakes! Why are they called moon cakes?
Me: They’re shaped like a full moon and for celebrating a festival during a full moon.
Rockstar: <mildly disappointed> Oh. They’re not from the moon?
Me: No, unfortunately… You could make up your own version though. What would your moon cakes from the moon be like?
Rockstar: Fish!
Me: What do you mean fish, cakes shaped like fish, made of fish… (Rockstar says made with fish)… There’s no water or really atmosphere on the moon for fish.
Rockstar: Bring some from Earth. Then bake them on the moon.
Me: And that makes them moon fish cakes?
Rockstar: Yeah!
This is like when Rockstar says the best way to eat honeydew and marshmallows is with parmesan cheese (discovered at a buffet)… And btw, he doesn’t like moon cakes, fish or no fish.
Anyway our day really started at 5pm. Kings was up since 3am the night before, working and feeling unwell. Made valiant attempt to wake around noon, slipped a pill, nope, not good, went back to bed, felt better at 5pm whereupon he was all What Are We Doing Today Again?
So we did the usual.
Tanglung-shopping!
Well actually Rockstar wanted to use his horse from school (classmate’s mum gave every kid in class a lantern just before the long weekend, Rockstar very thrilled to get the only horse…) but well Daddy wants to go lantern shopping for the Real Thing (candle lanterns) so we shall go for the Real Thing, so help us.
First ever McQueen Rockstar managed to say “no” to. With a little help, that is.
Another tempting one. (Btw did you know National Geographic Kids published an issue dedicated to Space Angry Birds? My parents found it in the airport. My parents come to HK to shop the airport. And 360. And Great super mart. And the pet shops.)
No, Rockstar, that is in fact not a lantern.
Guess what these are?
We are also passed by a very blonde and blue-eyed family – shopping in English for lanterns with two small kids.
Rockstar almost got the plane… The traditional tanglung of choice for me as a child was a goldfish. Can’t imagine why. I can understand why there are lotsa rabbits, but… goldfish? What’s the significance of goldfish to mid-autumn, anyway?
Guess what Kings was looking for, exiting the appropriately tanglung-ed 7-11, lighter? candles? Nahh, and anyway they sell those at the tanglung places…
Mooncakes!
These actually did not come from 7-11; they came from somewhere within walking distance, though. Biggest joke is we’d bought a box of relatively high-end ones in a silk presentation box from a swanky hotel weeks before, scarfed them down while hanging around at home, and then realized last night we were out.
No, that’s not the biggest joke. The biggest joke is these taste really yummy and Kings ended up inhaling quite a few in front of the telly late last night. What tummy bug? Sigh.
Rockstar refused to touch any. Then to add insult to injury as a compromise he decided on….
chocolate marshmallows!
Wow this whole Own Family Tradition thing gets better and better. And then for dinner we had…
Pic from http://rantaupr.com.my/
Hawaiian Tropical pizzas from PHD!
Because it was Sunday and Rockstar long ago decreed every Sunday is pizza night and woe betide anyone who tries to break that family tradition. We even have spare Hawaiians in the freezer (funny sentence, no? :D) for just such an emergency – in case we forget to order before 6pm in the course of our Sunday and end up waiting too long for one.
Then we got down to the business of trying to not to burn down the apartment block.
We had little paper ones that have been around since my school days…
And Rockstar had finally settled on a turtle “because it was so cute”
There. On our balcony. For like, 5 mins. Nice right?
Perfect string of traditional candlelit paper lanterns more than 20 floors up after we burned our laundry line into several pieces.
What I don’t understand is why we were the only ones. There was a sign about no wax burning, but I didn’t see anything about lanterns. We only lighted it for a couple minutes before our line caught fire we realized we were being stupid anyway. And then our clothes pegs melted Rockstar lost interest because James Bond Tomorrow Never Dies was on tv and anyway the baby slept through it all (it was the remote controlled BMW that enraptured him).
HAPPY MID-AUTUMN, EVERYONE!
BOUNTIFUL HARVEST FOR ONE AND ALL!!!
Happy Mid-Autumn to you and your family (and JD) too! I have very happy memories of celebrating this festival when I was a child. Good that you are giving Rockstar a happy time during this festival too so that he will have happy memories of it when he is an adult – happy memories of shopping for tanglung and lighting candles for the tanglungs ..and also ?excitement in seeing the laundry line burn? ;p
Haha he was quite disappointed he didn’t notice til it was in pieces! He kept the used candle wax in a box – to experiment with hot water and shows us gross globs of wax every now and again 😛