KEY POINTS:
Every Chinese New Year season for the first 25 years of my life, the whole cohort of my extended family would gather at my maternal grandmother's house.
Mum comes from a family of six siblings and each of them has children. The army of relatives who come out of the woodwork for that annual gathering - about 100 people - would pack into the little terraced house belonging to my grandmother, whom I call Mama Mak in my family's Peranakan dialect.
It was a day when my cousins and I would get up to all sorts of mischief - our favourite, much to her annoyance, was dressing up her pet shih tzu as a dog of fortune by tying red packets all over it.
Another was playing with water bombs, a game that often ended in disaster as the water-filled plastic bags missed their intended targets and splashed on to innocent bystanders instead.
Mum would be yelling for us to get out of the house, which we would happily do, and rush to a nearby drain to catch guppies or "drain fish", as we called them.
After Mama Mak died, we never had such huge family gatherings again, and since moving to New Zealand, I have given up any hope of experiencing anything like it again. Here, family means just my wife and two kids.
But I did feel like it was yesterday once more when a friend invited me to his family New Year celebrations last Sunday.
A firm believer that home is where the family is, my friend Tan Tee Seang has made it his personal mission to reunite family members since he moved here with his wife Ivy from Malaysia 19 years ago.
Understanding that employment would be the biggest hurdle, they worked with Ivy's sister and her husband to set up a factory that manufactures chips, cookies and Asian snacks.
So, with a guarantee of employment, he has since managed to persuade his brother, three of Ivy's siblings and even her mother to move over, one by one.
His family in New Zealand now spans three generations and numbers more than 30, all of whom were at that gathering.
At a time of year when family togetherness and values are emphasised, it did strike me how much I missed not having my family around.
We talked about food, and how they found any excuse to gather so that they could sample each other's Malaysian cooking.
How I miss being able just to hop into the car and drive to my mother's place every time I feel like having her laksa or chicken curry.
When I first moved to New Zealand, the freedom of being away did feel good. But more and more often, I am feeling the downside of not having family around.
The freedom to leave my two young kids at my parents' or with the in-laws if I feel like going out on a date with my wife is still just a dream.
But I guess the hardest part is in knowing that I am on my own here, and that I will have to live with the consequences of each decision I make. There will be no family support should I fall or make a mistake.
A colleague also once said that it is not true that absence makes a heart grow fonder, it just makes it colder. There is some truth to that.
I have found out that it was usually more a case of out of sight, out of mind.
I have come to accept, with a little sadness, that I am no longer invited to any family celebrations, and even for occasions like my mum's 70th birthday party this year, I am not even consulted.
People back home have got used to the fact that I am simply not there.
With the internet and cheap international calling cards, keeping in touch with siblings and loved ones is easy, but it can never be the same as having constant interaction, and even the occasional bickering and squabbling.
Chinese New Year celebrations run for 15 days, and concluded last night with the Lantern Festival.
I have fond memories of one I celebrated in Malacca when I accompanied a single aunt to the Malacca River to throw mandarin oranges into the river.
She believed that these oranges would make her the apple of someone's eye and hence bring her good luck in finding a husband. We then joined in a parade of lanterns and played with firecrackers.
The Auckland Lantern Festival is one event I have always made a point to attend with mixed feelings.
I love the way culture comes alive there, the smell of firecrackers and being able to share the experience with my children.
But how I also hate the acute attacks of homesickness it brings.
