12 Ooo... Burnt Some Lanterns!

The Mid-Autumn Festival is also commonly referred to as "Mooncake Day" where I come from. On this day, my aunts gather families for a meal. We eat mooncakes, play lanterns and chat. The festival falls on the 8th of September this year.

Sharon's Fish Lantern for Mooncake Day 2014!

Mooncakes come in amazing variety these days - sugar free, cranberry, chocolate, coffee, durian! The only mooncake flavour I ever saw or tasted in my younger days were the ones with red bean or lotus seed paste filling. Some had an egg yolk in the center, some didn't.

Talking about the festival takes me back to my first year in college. I was left alone in the double storey house where I had rented a room. The landlady was away.

I didn't want to be left out, so I bought myself 10 paper lanterns to hang up. The clothes line outside the house seemed like a great place to hang the lanterns. I hung them up in a pretty row. My face glowed with some sort of pride. Yeah, I was alone and yet, not alone. These lanterns are going to brighten my mooncake day for sure.

Later that night, I lit all the candles in the lantern up. I was so pleased.

After spending some minutes admiring the calm flicker of yellow light, I went back into the house to have my meal. Then, went back out again for another round of oohing and aahing.

To my horror, the lanterns had caught fire! Oh, you should have seen my jaw drop. The clothes line snapped under the heat.

Putting the fire out was easy. A bucket of water did the job. The big question, for any teen, was really how to explain 'all this' to a vacationing landlady.

"Err ...Aunty, ah? Happy Mooncake Day.."  I wished her hesitantly. "Haha..know what? I kind of burnt the clothes line".

Kind of? ... Hah! Long story short. She let me off easy.

Lantern for Mooncake Day

This year, hubs bought us a fish lantern to light up. Isn't it cute? I'm going to celebrate this special occasion with a nice meal, one mooncake and looking out into the night sky. That's pretty much what I do every other year. No, I don't find it boring. Shoo!