The Year of the Ox

This weekend a four-day holiday starts, celebrating the end of the Year of the Rat and the beginning of the Year of the Ox. The stores are now stocked with beautifully packaged gift baskets, as gift-giving is a part of the tradition. Lovely boxes containing carefully-chosen, individually packaged fruits can sell for exorbitant prices, as can other foodstuffs, like fragrant oils, honeys, and such. A few days ago, though, I saw a gift box that absolutely blew my mind. In a nice yellow box, swaddled in tissue, lay four parallel rows of shiny, clean, cans of...


wait for it...


















Spam. Yes. Good old-fashioned spam. Apparently nothing says Happy New Year like processed pig parts.

Happy Lunar New Year!

(P.S. I took the job. It's now official. USA here we come.)