Chinese New Year Spirit - It Is Slow To Heat Up This Year

A lot of Sibuians say they just don't feel the Chinese New Year spirit yet. True - it seems that the festive heating -up is relatively slow this year. With just two more weeks to go, the market appears to be slow-moving and lacklustre, making all trades fill with an air of pessimism.

Dwindling consumer confidence is the crux of it. With escalating food prices and wildly hot speculation on fuel price movements after the upcoming parliamentary election, it would be reasonable for the consumer sentiment to be depressed.

Yes, most of us are now going on negative growth in real income. It is a hard pinch and it impacts the festive shopping.

Yesterday I took time off with Yian to source for new kitchen cabinets. The old ones are too worn out for purposeful use.

We made a prudent survey and decided to settle on the offers by Lianshun Furniture.

The eloquent salesgirl was quick to pour out to us that the festive shopping is still in the doldrums - and her dismal voice said it all: it is going to be a slow-moving season.

Yian and I took a good while to clear off the old cabinets to pave way for the new arrival.

There are heaps of crockery stored up by my mom and Yian over the years. It took us hours of labour to wash them and stack them up in the new cabinets.

It was great fun working together for the betterment of of our family.