New Year's Haul

I was looking at my red packet loot, and realized that my haul has been shrinking by the year. In fact, it's reached an all time low this year. Strangely enough, the individual amounts have not changed much, so there should be little reason for the overall yield to be lower...right? Wrong. I failed to factor in mortality.

Note to self: ensure that red packet givers are immortal, to ensure consistent yields. After some thought, I realized that my haul can be attributed to the shortage of currently-living relatives. In fact, I'm currently short of 3 of them at the moment. Hmm. And not recently...I just failed to take note over the years. That'd also explain the comparative freedom during the new year period, since there are fewer family members to visit. Eureka!

On a related note, I found that the red packet amounts are a generally insignificant amount of my overall current salary, which may explain my lack of notice of the change in amounts. *checks relatives list* Darn...a bunch of them are getting old alright...