It's CNY once again. Honestly, I didn't know when it was until the week before. The feeling is just different here. In Sg, the shops would have been playing CNY songs soon after Christmas. It's not depicted in the calanders here either. So I began to lose track of the PHs in Sg.
1 thing that puzzles me is the zodiac sign for this year. I'm sure you'll have seen it written as both year of the sheep & goat, depending on which article you read. I've seen on FB my friends having their nails painted with sheep nail art designs. I think the actual 1 should be goat. If you have those old style Chinese calander, the picture or drawing is always of a goat. But I can see where the confusion begins. Sheep or goat, they're both called 羊. Just that sheep is 绵羊 & goat is 山羊. So I think that's why they're used interchangably.
A patient asked me this question just on Friday. She said she thought it's the year of the goat. But in the US, they're calling it year of the sheep. She didn't think the US will get it wrong & hence she asked me. A colleague asked me the same thing & said that the sheep & goat are 2 completely different animals with different temperaments. So how can they be lumped together as the same kind of animal? So that's the explanation I gave her. That they're both called the same name in mandarin. Yeah, Chinese can be pretty confusing.
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