Happy New Year!

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Today is Songkran, the Thai New Year’s day. I’ve lived in Patong for almost ten years now, and I’m always thrilled when Songkran rolls around, not jus
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Happy New Year to you. I am happy to have another New Year to celebrate. I like all of them. A water one sounds great (Pisces birthday).

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Sanda –

We get three full-out new years. January 1, of course. But we also celebrate Chinese New Year, typically in late February. Lots and lots of people from China (and overseas Chinese) come to Phuket to party. Songkran is my favorite of the three…

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Songkran is not just water sloshed on drivers, these days. Increasingly, there’s occasional ice (Brrrrr!) in there, and a great deal of what looks like powdered colorful paint, possibly flour, mixed in with the water.

My white-haired friends who have braved the streets on motorbikes invariably come home looking like they’ve been fingerpaint-decorated by an American Indian war party.

It’s all good-natured fun, though, and washes off easily. Any Songkran-related traffic injuries are insignificant compared to the Christmas-to-New-Years Thai “seven days of danger”, which typically have dozens of alcohol-related deaths.

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Kung hei fat choi everyone!

I also want to show you an Australian gold bullion coin issued for the occasion. Oddly showing a mouse instead of a rat, this being the Year of the Metal Rat (although, according to Wikipedia, the Chinese word “shu” might be used to refer to either a mouse or a rat).

As you can see in this article, this year is named after a celestial creature endowed with several important and desirable attributes (especially in humans) of which regular rats don’t seem to have that much:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_(zodiac)

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Woody isn’t Songkran in April?  This year 13-16 being Public Holidays. Happy New Year to you.  A touusand thanks for Windows 10 help from Sukhumvit Soi 18.

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Actually today (25th January) is the Lunar Chinese New Year. It usually falls some day in February, but, like Easter, or the Eastern Orthodox Christmas, its date being determined by a lunar calendar, it tends to wander a bit around the solar Gregorian calendar used by most people these days. I was surprised to discover that it was going to fall so early this year, but there you have it. Those lucky ones that know this and live not too far from a China Town, don’t have to miss out on the sticky rice cake, Dragon and Lion dancing and big firecrackers’ fun.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/24/lunar-new-year-traditions-chinese-vietnamese-korean/4527349002/

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Sawatdee!

Songkran’s still a way off. But we’ll get there.

All the best from near Nashville….

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[GreatAndPowerfulTech]

Bing translated
恭喜發財
as Congratulations on getting rich.

Google gave me Kung Hei Fat Choi, which is oddly not helpful at all!

Happy new year is 新年快樂.

GreatAndPowerfulTech

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by GreatAndPowerfulTech. Reason: Added a line

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