Celebrating the Rabbit's arrival in a rainforest

As I gazed at the ink-wash that was the night sky over Malaysian Borneo's rainforest, I lamented its silence and its monochrome. It was the first chuxi (lunar new year's eve) my wife and I had spent outside of China since we moved to Beijing in 2006.

I knew the skies of China's capital - thousands of kilometers away from the swath of heaven I was staring up at - were sparkling with fireworks. Its air was shuddering with the percussions of perhaps millions of pyrotechnic detonations. And jubilant crowds were swirling through the smoky cracks between Beijing's buildings, cheering on the Year of the Rabbit's arrival.

I was pondering how surprised I was at how much I missed the hullabaloo, especially the way the skies danced with sparks and crackled with countless explosions, and about how something seemed just wrong about spending this night beneath an unconscious sky, when - BOOM!