These Festive Red Packets

This practice of giving red packets / lai see (利是) / ang pows (壓歲錢、紅包) during the lunar new year period. IT IS SO ANNOYING. It's super unfair to those who are married but are child-free. I'm not particularly pleased about it. It's social pressure. It's a traditionalistic plot to get people to have children to make it fair across the board. 

Well, at least for me, I make a stand against the practice. Call me a miser, if you like. But I'm just grumps about it. Should I be caught in a situation in a house full of strange children, or even extended family's children, I'm that weird person who would be entirely shameless, and I can totally not give the children ang pows. I'm not in the habit of giving away S$200 in angpows under such circumstances. Also, once you've graduated from school with a bachelor's and you're a working adult, I wouldn't give you an ang pow, please. 

Our parents and in-laws still give us ang pows, and they have stated clearly that they don't want us to give them any. So we simply get them festive flowers, and gifts of savory foods that we know they want. We still receive ang pows from obstinate aunties whom we don't see but they keep passing them to us via other people (whatever for?!), but it doesn't mean that we're polite enough to return them in kind for their 10 grandchildren. Some got the message after a bit, but some didn't.

However, I'm happy to hand out lai see to familiar children and floofs, and old folks whom I know and I like. Thank goodness that for all the lai see given to Choya, I have reciprocated as well, and these are to people I see IRL. Then that is significant and meaningful. Since we don't have a tipping culture here, lai see are also handed out as an annual token of appreciation to the servers at the restaurants, the estate's cleaning crew, gardeners, and security team, my hairdresser, nail technicians, as well as Choya's bakers, groomers, meat suppliers, walkers, et cetera. 

At the end of the season, I looked at the excel sheet for ang pow expenditure. The outflow is way lower than budgeted. Not that I mind, but I just don't want to give ang pows to people I don't care about. I don't bother about inflow. I simply take note of who's giving us, and do a mental note to find a way to reciprocate in the year, and if I don't reciprocate, that's intentional.