The pandemic has made it very difficult for family members who live in different countries to be able to physically visit each other. I live in Melbourne, Australia with my husband and two kids. My dad lives in Kuching in Sarawak, Malaysia. My sister lives in Miri, another city in Sarawak. My youngest sister lives in Madrid, Spain with her husband. With travel restrictions in place, I was so lucky to be able to get an exemption last year to spend time with my mother before she passed, but now that I am back in Australia, who knows when my next trip will be.

So, we try to stay in touch as much as we can. We have WhatsApp chat groups for day to day check ins, and every now and then we do a Zoom video call. During Christmas, our Zoom call was literally a lunch, dinner and breakfast lol. My family and I had a whole table set up Christmas-themed style, and my youngest sister was having breakfast on the other side of the world. It’s not the most ideal way of spending time with family, but I am thankful for technology.

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Before I digress further, I just wanted to share an activity we did over Zoom that was lots of fun. Sometimes when you don’t really know what to talk about on Zoom, it’s good to do an activity. My sisters and I have done drinking activities on video calls before… lol but that’s another story for another time. Recently, we did a Cooking Class activity on Zoom for Chinese New Year, where I was leading with instructions (list of ingredients provided beforehand) and we just baked something together at the same time. We made Cheese Stix, mum’s favourite Chinese New Year snack. The cheese stix turned out to be cheese bread for me, because I didn’t roll them thin enough to be a cookie/biscuit.. and it could have probably used A LOT more cheese etc. The point wasn’t how delicious or not they turned out, the point was we had fun and literally captured the memories. Family time is so important and should be cherished any chance we get.