Saturday, February 13, 2010

#290 Year of the Tiger

Feb 14th is Chinese New Year, the year's biggest holiday in China. This is like Christmas in the Western World. The Chinese travel home to be with their families, eat traditional food, and watch NFL football. Well, two out of three. The Chinese traditional calendar follows the lunar calendar, so the new year is marked by a full moon and occurs on a different day each year.

2010 is the 3rd year in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese Zodiac which makes this the year of the tiger. The Chinese believe that the markings on the forehead of the tiger resemble the Chinese character for "wang" or king and the tiger is the traditional symbol of military commanders in China. All of this info I plaigerized from a spam email I received during the week from our local graphics supplier. He also provided the picture above of the hybrid tiger and race car.

The Cat Suzhou factory is closed for the Chinese New Year next week, so the Cazzato family is heading out for another big-yellow funded R&R trip. This time we are going to the Philippines to an island called Boracay. A group of our neighbors went there last year and recommended it. Kathleen did all of planning for this trip. As I write this entry, we are using the free wifi at the Hong Kong airport. Our next flight takes us to Manila where we will spend the night. On Sunday we will take a third flight then a bus, a ferry boat, and a van to get to our beach resort. I will keep you posted if there is internet on the island.

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