ASBC/China Lounge - Chinese New Year Celebration

Yesterday evening our celebration of the Chinese New Year finally took place! The preparations all went smoothly up to the evening itself. First, one of hour friends we should pick up from home, messed up time and so we came later than planned to the restaurant. Nevetheless we got everything set up in time, the first guests arrived but our partner and the guestlist did not show up. He gave us a call that he will be a little late, but we expected him to be there with the guest list in time....
But his two assistants came as planned, more guests arrived, but he was still missing....and we got notice that due to computer problems at the copyshop we would have no name tags for the guests...okay we did our best to welcome the guests and show them where they can take a seat (except the table for the VIP-guests they had free choice)...the time for the planned champagne reception passed by, more and more guests came and still our partner was missing...the first guests started to eat, because the buffett was already open due to another group celebrating as well...slowly we got problems to find seats for all the guests and some people from the press arrived as well...our partner closed the registration form way to late (that was my first thought after he told us the number of guests and this thought was right)...and more people joined than expected...the time for the official started passed by and our partner (who should moderate with a friend of us) was still missing...so we started to hand out champagne and orange juice...he came 45 minutes late. Finally we could start with the Lion Dance:

(Is it true that stroking the lion brings good luck? - after watching the other guest closely I finally did it too )

After the lion dance the chinese consul held a short speech followed by the presentation from Us , including me, introducing the ASBC and more about the chinese new year (I told the legend about the Yearmonster, named Nian (chinese for year)) and the chinese zodiacs.
Luckily the went pretty smooth - It was the first time I spoke in front of so many people. Hopefully i won't see the pics of it . It actually will be the first time our community will get mentioned in the local press .

Afterwards we officially opened the buffett and Sebastian, a close friend of mine, was so kind to go the buffett for me and fill my plate because I was totally exhausted after running around for almost three hours...

I was happy that my english teacher from our inhouse classes at my company came together with a friend of him:

He's a funny guy and a good teacher and storyteller! Another friend of him joined later, to whom I talked for quite a while because we work in the same business . I was glad that I finally met him and hope to talk with him more at an opportunity later on..

I also found the time after some more buffett to talk to some guests:

Shortly afterwards we continued with the program and our friend Lani (she wears a traditional vietnamese dress named Ao Dai) did a good job in moderating together with our partner. It was the first time she did it!

(behind her the proud owner of the restaurant)

We continued with some traditional dances and erhu (chinese violine):

(chili girls)

Everone was listening closely to the erhu play of the guy. He's only 15 and already reached master class! And he was really good, so he had to play an addtional tune.

(happy tambourine)

This was the final dance and we started with the informal part of the celebration. Many guests but some stayed and contuined chatting and talking. Say also hello to our youngest guest: