It’s nice to live in Singapore and look forward to the new year, mainly because of food and the associated festivals. In December, there were Christmas lights and decorated trees scattered all over the place and Orchard Road was glowing with its usual, magical lighting show. On the food front, we had stores selling “take-out” dinners of entire roasted turkeys and slabs of roast beef, chocolate yule logs, and peppermint candy canes. But while the Western world starts to wind down and face the new year, serious and sober, we’re gearing up again for Chinese New Year. The red decorations have hit all the stores, sales of oranges are going through the roof (because its Chinese name sounds like gold/wealth), and we’ve bought our ang pow envelopes for the kids. (These are envelopes containing money, which are usually given to unmarried people/children.)

In the fourth lunar month after Chinese New Year, there’s the Buddhist holiday of Vesak Day, a day that celebrates Buddha’s birth and is also a day of charity. The Mid-Autumn Festival is famous for its mooncakes, where every hotel in the Chinese-dominated world tries to outdo itself with new and innovative tastes (capuccino or champagne mooncakes, anyone?).

Later in the year, we have the Muslim month of fasting (Puasa month), followed by a joyous celebration at its end in Hari Raya. There are culinary specialties that you can only get around this time of the year (after sundown) that you can’t usually get anytime else.

And, of course, let’s not forget the Hindu festival of Deepavali (the Festival of Light) that celebrates the triumph of good over evil within each person, and is also characterised (for me at least) by some seriously kick-ass food. There are lots of smaller festivals, but those are the main ones. And the calendar slowly segues back to Christmas and that Western food again.

So bring it on, 2008! Me and my appetite are ready!

All Romance eBooks conducted an interview with me…you can read my most profound thoughts (as well as that of author Alex Beecroft and a free read from Jane Beckenham) here.

Thanks to Maria and her comment on my last blog, I’ll be moving things around and adding a list of links to blogs I usually visit. I warn you, it’s going to be a weird list but, if you visit here, you’re probably already prepared for that. (UPDATE: Done! See “Interesting links” below/on the Home page. It looks a little blocky at the moment, but I’ll tweak it as time goes on.)

As part of my end-of-year review, I also checked my review links and half of them are dead. This is probably because the review sites have only a limited amount of server space and they have to clear out the old to make room for the new. So, rather than frustrate everyone by linking to dead URLs, I’ve decided to remove all hyperlinks to reviews. You’ll just have to trust me that people said what they did!

Teddy Pig always has kick-ass geek posts, so I’m adding the Ajax Edit Comments plugin to the site. This will give you 15 minutes to edit a comment because, as we all know, inspiration always hits the second after we press the “Submit” button.

And last of the things I need to do this weekend is upgrade my version of Wordpress. I’ll be using Teddy’s recommended upgrade plugin, so wish me luck! * Gulp*

You know, I have blog posts lined up for almost the whole month, but nothing to kick off 2008. Okay, maybe I have. Housekeeping.

I’ve taken down the SitePal talking avatar because nobody seemed to like it much and it was probably chewing up someone’s dial-up bandwidth.

Also, in a recent article on Dear Author (love the new look, by the way), Jayne spoke about the complete lack of information on upcoming books at author websites. Well, after Combat!, there’s going to be none on mine because there aren’t any yet. Nothing much I can do about that. However, I have added a little tag to my WIPs, so you have an idea of what I’m working on. It’s not much, and the book may end up not selling, but it’s there anyway.

The third of the month is my regular day to blog over at TEB’s Hitting the Hot Spot. Not quite sure what to write about today, but I’m sure inspiration will eventually hit. [UPDATE: A completely prosaic post on resolutions and how they’re only half the problem.] And I have an interview with All Romance eBooks that should be out pretty soon. I’ll let you know when.

So over to you. No guarantees, but is there anything you’d like to see me add to the site? Take away? Any other comments you’d like to make about resolutions? Plans? Here’s a chance for all you other guys who don’t normally comment to come out of lurkdom, just for the new year!