Kelana Purba

Across the street from our apartment there is a mall. It is, like many malls here, a hub of activity because it is indoors and therefore protected from rain, heat, and humidity. In addition to the standard clothing stores and shoe stores you find in a mall, it is the home to our grocery store, two food courts, and numerous restaurants. The dry cleaners are also there, and at least 2 bakeries. I think we may have also located a tattoo parlor inside. Anyway, it is very commonplace to also hold events in the mall. This particular mall, the EastPoint mall, has a small stage that is always there. The first floor (on the floor, in the middle) is almost always a different vendor. Sometimes its random stuff, sometimes it's clothes. Last week or so was a holiday (Hari Raya) and so in addition to a clothing vendor, they had a show. This group, Kelana Purba, performed. They sang and motioned doing something called the Tikir Barat. I took a little video of them from the 3rd floor with a camera that has no audio. That's what you see, here:

Now, what you miss is the audio. So I found them on YouTube. The first minute of the video is not really interesting, but after that, listen to the music. You don't need to know what the words are, just watch and listen.



The guy in the front who gets up and sings solo is apparently sort of an MC - he is supposed to have a lot of personality and interact with the audience somewhat. He is supposed to also be funny. We didn't stick around long enough to see the audience interaction part of the show, but the rest of it was really cool. The singing guys hand movements were really cool to watch from up above.

The mall has had a lot of interesting things on that first floor. Expect more posts on it soon. :-)

Random pictures

Here are a few random pictures for you guys. The first are the flowers outside the apartment. I don't know what they're called, they grow in clusters of about 5 or so of these (and they're large) per stem. I will try and get a picture of the cluster, they're really pretty when they're all alive. (Mom - please make sure Dad sees them. Thanks!)



The second picture is for you, Jon. I just sort of thought you'd like it. It's from the dollar store. They're plastered all over the shop and they make me laugh every time I see them. Mathew recoiled in horror when I was "touristy" and took a picture of it, but I had to. Here you are:



Here is a bread car. The very first Formula 1 Night Race ever in the world is occurring here in Singapore and this is a commemorative bread car. You can buy it, or the smaller version which is a pastry car. The pastry car (which you can see a little on the shelf below) is $2.50, I don't know how much this one is.



And finally, here is a kitty cat. We have seen about 3 feral cats here that all live right by the apartment, across the street by the food centers. Not a one of them has a full sized tail, and this one has half an ear, as well. I've seen this one twice, he was sleeping in the middle of nowhere both times - this photo he was sleeping on a walkway, the other time I saw him he was sleeping on a table. People seem to like him - we saw some grown men make kissy noises at him in a nice way, so clearly not all Chinese folk like to eat cats. Remarkably, all three cats I saw were reasonably large.

Locked WoW accounts

Somehow, I got both mine and Mathew's accounts on World of Warcraft temporarily (24 hours) locked. We can't log in at all. I think it has to do with being over here or something, or possibly a mod I have. I don't know yet and I can't call them for another 5 or 6 hours to try and figure it out. Mathew's pissed. :-(

6 Month Anniversary Sushi Dinner

It's hard to believe, but Mathew and I have only been dating for 6 months. As of this week. So for our six month anniversary, we decided to have sushi. It was what we had on our first date, and it's our favorite food, so we figured, "Why not?" We have only had sushi once here, in the mall, and this time we did some research before selecting a spot to eat. We picked a place in Suntec City (a convention center) but it was given rave reviews in all the blogs and newspapers we read about it in. It was a weird food court style restaurant but with wait staff. They were again very attentive - barely left us alone for two minutes to read the menu. When they saw we were a little overwhelmed with selections, they offered that the sushi chef could make us a platter of sashimi at his whim. We agreed. The following is what appeared:



It should be noted that that is a fish head on the left, actually, the entire skeleton of a fish. He has fins, bones, everything. And his meat is right behind those cucumbers. They gave us a whole fish. It was quite good. Once we were done with it, they asked us what we wanted done with the bones - soup, or frying them up. We opted for soup. It was a miso soup, but it contained the rest of the meat and the skin and the bones of the fish - which flavored the soup and also the fish meat both really nicely.

But wait - you saw those little crab guys, right? Freakin' cutest things you've ever seen. About the size of a quarter, maybe. And yes, they're real. And edible. And fried (somehow). Pop it in your mouth, nice and crunchy and that's it!

Close ups:


My baby crab


Mathew's baby crab

We continued by having the Shiok! Maki, which is their famous specialty. It is lightly seared salmon, and some mayonnaise based sauce topped with tobiko on the outside of an eel-based maki roll. Somehow, a blowtorch is also involved. It was unusual for sushi, because it was partially cooked and smothered in sauce, but it was tasty.



After that, we tried to order some pieces of sushi. We were again offered to let the sushi chef drive if we did not order the two pieces we had ordered and instead let him feed us. We consented, and he sent out pairs of sushi one after another - one remarkable piece was (possibly) mackerel belly. Holy cow. I've had tuna belly, but this is beyond that. Again, it was lightly seared. It was one of the most amazing pieces of sushi I've ever had. Slippery and meaty and fatty but just perfect. I would have loved more of that.

He also sent us some clam or something, but neither one of us was a fan. Then he came out to ask how he was doing and then said that he would like to make us something special, but it was shared, and non-traditional, and would we consent? So, being good sports, we agreed. It arrived. A small bowl covered with lightly seared salmon, ikura (salmon eggs) on top, and two spoons. We were a little confused at how to eat it so he showed up again and told us what to do. When we started to dig in, there was chirashi rice (seasoned sushi rice) underneath, and in between the salmon and the rice - uni (sea urchin)!!! It was the best uni I've ever had. Mathew didn't want to try it but he finally acquiesced and tasted it. Even he didn't think it was bad.

We were stuffed by the end. Beyond stuffed. But you have no idea how much it costs when you let the chef drive. I won't get into numbers, but let's say it was probably the most expensive no-liquor meal either one of us has ever eaten.

Perigord Dinner

For Dave's last night here, we went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Joycelyn, the woman who works here at Perigord Singapore, picked a place with Chili Crab to take us to. We all went - Mathew, Dave, Joycelyn, and Po lin (the other woman in the office) all met me near the restaurant. This was a sit down place with service, as opposed to a lot of the eating venues here where you do not have waiters. We ate inside. The tables had on them peanuts and some dipping sauces, as well as a bowl of water with limes for washing your fingers later. The peanuts were unusual to us, though, because they were steamed. This makes them squishy. I'd never had squishy peanuts before, but I think it's something I'll miss when I get back to the states.



We sort of let Joycelyn order everything - she ordered everything at once and told them what order to bring everything out in . The first was a Bullfrog and Chili appetizer, which we all ate communally with our chopsticks. It was really good and not really that spicy. The bull frogs were bigger than frog I'd had previously in the states so there was more meat and they were easier to eat. Then they gave us this big fried fish.



I think that's after we all picked at it. Yes, there were lots of bones (ew for bones). But the fish was flaky and good and the flavor was amazing. Again, we all sort of took chunks back to our respective plates and that was that. As our plates filled with frog bones and fish bones, the wait staff removed our plates and refreshed them with new ones.

The next dish, a drunken prawn ginseng soup, was really really good. It was giant piles of ginseng (which you weren't supposed to eat) and then about 10 or 12 prawns in a clear broth. Po Lin dished out the soup to all of us. This isn't a great picture of it, but here's a prawn covered in ginseng in Mathew's soup.



Yes, those are eyes. They are apparently put in the soup alive, and they get drunk on the liquor in the soup (white wine, we believe) and then are cooked alive while drunk. Hence, the name - drunken prawn soup. They are obviously shell-on, with legs, tails, everything. So we had to remove the shells in order to eat the prawns. Very very very good prawns, though.

(Prawn soup, bullfrog, chili sauce for the fish, and people eating)

Next they gave us salted fish fried rice. No photo of this, it looks like very light fried rice. But the salted fish was amazing - tiny little chewy chunks of SUPER salty fish in a lightly fried rice complete with bean sprouts. I would have eaten this as the whole meal, it was amazing. (We had it again later at another restaurant and it wasn't anywhere nearly as good as that place.)

Finally, they took most of our food away and brought out the Chili Crab. This was a MASSIVE bowl of crabs in a spicy and hot (temperature wise) chili base. They provided two shell crackers at the table, and one wet nap a person (to last the whole meal - there are virtually no paper napkins given out in Singapore). Luckily the shell was mostly cracked up already so it wasn't too hard, but the crab and chili were hot to the touch and it was very very messy because of the chili. I'm surprised we didn't wind up wearing more of it on ourselves than we did. Occasionally a crab would squirt across the table and hit someone, that was fun once or twice.



It should be noted that these are massive crabs. (The one on the bottom of the photo is the body of the crab, on his back.) The bowl is enormous. There were about 2 full crabs in that bowl, I think - based on the number of claws and bodies - but it was plenty to go around. The chili crab came with a small piece of bread/roll - but it was sweet bread, almost like a doughnut but not quite that sweet. I imagine this is to cut the heat of the chili. It was spicy, but not terribly. Good all around flavor.

We also ordered a pitcher (which turned into two) of Tiger beer - but only the men had it. What was unusual here was that the wait staff kept re-approaching the table and pouring the beer from the pitcher into the glasses of the men who were having it. They never finished an entire glass before it was refilled. There was no discussion of who would have the last bit; the waitstaff decided.

Lastly, Mathew & I split a dessert, and Dave had one, too. It was a sort of Mango purée with little tapioca pearls and bits of fresh mango. Really delicious, and great after all the spicy food.

What was amazing was that all of that food (2 pitchers of beer, rice, soup, appetizer, two entrees, 2 desserts) only came to about $50 (US) a head. That's including tax and tip. Now, most meals here are like $3 US including tax and there's no tip, but for a 2 hour long meal with such amazing food, I think the value was great. It all balances out, I guess - spending $3-5 a day on food and then once in awhile spending $50 - all equalizes out to less than you'd expect to spend on food eating out for every meal.

No equal opportunities here

We are looking for an apartment, and one of the questions the agents keep asking is, "What is your race?" Also, posting specify, "No Chinese," or, "Malay only." It's really weird to be questioned on your race when applying for housing.

Also, the military is mandatory here for men, but not for women (women cannot be in the military here). So if women decide to become police officers, they do not get paid as much as men for the same jobs because the men have more training.

New Apartment/Moving?

The lease on the place we're living at, Modena, is about $4000 a month - not including utilities or TV license fees. It has a great location - literally across the street from the MRT. But it's huge, very sparse, and VERY expensive. So we're going to go apartment hunting for a cheaper apartment. It looks like we can get a 3 BR (I want a 2, but it doesn't seem like there are many out there) for around $2500, maybe $3000. Which is still a significant savings over here, and it'll be closer to where Mathew works. So I've written to a few places and we'll see what comes back.

We will go viewing apartments soon, hopefully, and post pictures as we do.

TV License

Apparently in Singapore, you need a license to own a television. Today, a man came to the door and asked me if we had a TV. I said we did, but that we didn't use it (it wasn't even hooked up). He said, "What brand is your TV?" and I was confused. Again, I said, I don't know, "We don't even use it." He said, "But you have one?" And I said, "Yes." So he said, "I am from the Media Development Authority, there is a license to own a TV." And he handed me a sort of Summons notice. The license is apparently not transferrable, it is valid from Jan-Dec, and it is S$110.

It appears valid with a government (.gov.sg) domain for the website. Weird. I guess we'll have to figure out what to do with it.

Shrimp Heads

We had sushi last night for the first time in Singapore. For the most part, it was the same stuff that you get in the states, only much much fresher. We went to a small place in the mall, so we knew it wasn't going to be amazing sushi but it was still really really fresh fish. The salmon was moist and fatty, not at all salty like we're used to in the states. We ordered a big plate of sashimi and split it between the two of us. While we were eating the sweet shrimp (amaebi) the waiter came back with a small of plate of something fried. He said, "Forgot! Here are the heads. (pointing at shrimp)" And then he left.

Apparently, in other parts of the world, you eat the shrimp's head. I figured, why not, and gastrologically went forward. The shell is still on the head. The eyes are there, looking up at you from their tempura blanket. And it still has feelers. I ate part of it, leaving just the tip - but getting out the meat from inside the shell. I wasn't sure if you were supposed to eat the shell. The meat is, by the way, amazingly flavored. It has a meaty texture and taste, it is not sweet like the body and also not chewy. It was quite good and reminded me of softshell crab.

I have since learned that you are supposed to eat the entire thing, shell and all. Next time, I suppose.

Oh - and the ikura (salmon eggs) was AMAZING. Best ikura I've ever had. Not just a flavor of salt water like in the states. A delicate and just complex flavor that I've never tasted before in the same thing. These eggs were clearly fresh and I can't wait to have more.

Humpy Head

In the supermarket today, I saw fish food. I will go back and take a picture when I get a little camera next week, but here is a picture of it I found on the net. It says on it, "Increase Head Growth." It just reminds me way too much of all those VIAGRA-esque SPAM emails you get.

Other things of note in the grocery store: They have Frosted Flakes. Except they're called "Frosties." And they have Cookie Crisp, too - but you know that little burglar dog? He's not on it. Instead there's some weird looking panther or something. I imagine a country that despises crime as much as this one would not allow burglar cartoon animals on their cereal.

We also saw our first McDonald's yesterday - and they have a berry-McFlurry. And grape swirled soft serve. We also saw the closest thing to a Friendly's I imagine they have, a restaurant called, "Swensen's." They had ice cream cakes and dinner and ice cream sundaes and things like that. And Disney-themed ice cream mooncakes.

Finally, I tried to buy Ibuprofen. I wandered a tiny pharmacy for a few minutes and then finally asked the shopkeeper. He went behind a counter and a locked glass case on the wall and gave me a tiny box containing 6 200mg ibuprofen pills. Price? S$3.50.($2.50US) If I had known ibuprofen was such a rare commodity, I would have brought my own.

Next door to IKEA...

... we found a store called "Courts Megastore." It was a sort of SEARS like store, with 3 levels containing everything from furniture and matresses to plates and televisions. They had these flat but diagonal escalators called "travellators" which were really hard to ride because of how you have to stand on them. We've noticed that all of the escalators here run a lot faster than the ones in the states. I'm guessing it's because the legal system in the states would cause more people to sue when they fell off of the fast moving escalator. We were on our way to IKEA but this place seemed more interesting and I'm glad we went. We got some much-needed stuff for our barren apartment - bright pillows for the couch, a fuzzy plant, a hamper, some trash cans, and a mattress pad that has little "no" symbols with dustmites in them printed on it. (Down with dustmites!) There is apparently a store called "Giant" across the way which seems to be a Walmart-esque store with groceries and everything else you can imagine. I think we'll check that out in a day or so. We need art for the walls to make this place less echo-y.

Pillows in the living room! It's not much, but it means a lot to me. You know, the little things... (Click picture for better image)

My fuzzy plant. It's real, but I don't know what it is. It's about 2 feet tall.

Close up on the fuzzy plant. The whole thing, from the stems to the leaves, is covered in soft fine hair.

Video tour - apartment

Here is a video tour of our IKEA White apartment.

Smoking

Singapore has decided to combat smoking by putting absolutely horrific photos on their packs of cigarettes. I couldn't find the one on gangrene on the net, but here are some of the ones I saw (and a few I didn't see). These images appear on the top of every pack of cigarettes, before you even know what brand you're looking at, and cover around 1/3 of the pack.

What do you think? Would it gross you out more as a smoker or a non-smoker? I'm pretty grossed out by it and I haven't ever smoked a single cigarette.

Mathew's first day of work

I'm probably supposed to start this with a summary post, which would explain everything I've done for the past two weeks between leaving the country and arriving in Singapore, but I think I'm going to skip that for now. =P At some point I promise to come back and take care of that, but for now, my first day of work.

After getting up and venturing forth with Jenna this AM to find breakfast (which I'm sure she'd like to talk about in her own post), I made my way to the office with David, one of the Project Managers from Dublin who is over here for a few weeks. We took a cab rather than giving the SMRT a try (though later this week I plan to... a cab may be cheap at S$10 in, but the train is cheaper at about S$2), and got here around 10am local time.

Of course, absolutely nothing is ready for me here. :) There's an iMac, but most of the work I'll have to do will be on a PC, which has been ordered but supposedly isn't arriving until tomorrow. Further, none of the software on the iMac seems to have been properly registered... Office thinks it's an Upgrade, CS3 wants to be activated because it's no longer on Trial, etc etc. Oh well. I guess that just means I kill time today, and will worry about really getting set up and started on work tomorrow.

The only thing I've done of interest today aside from sit at my iMac realizing nothing is working is having lunch at this little hole in the wall food stand downstairs. It consists of two food booths (one that serves rice dishes, and the other that serves noodles, though only the former was open today), a drink booth, and about 40 tables, all set up in what basically looks like a large garage bay. My lunch, which consisted of rice and three sides (chicken and two random vegetables) was S$2.80, and a 330mL Coke to go with it was another S$1.30, bringing my lunch (which was very filling) to a total of S$4.10. They weren't joking when they said food is cheap here, and definitely very good. The rice had a unique flavor, though I can't quite put my finger on it, the chicken had a flavor somewhat like what we thing of as General Tso's chicken in the US, and one of the veggies (perhaps green beans, though I'm not entirely sure) had an odd fish flavor to it, but I found all of it very agreeable and happily scarfed it down. :) I'm certainly not going to go hungry here. Joycelyn, a Singapore native we've hired on to work in the office, says we'll go have Thai food for lunch tomorrow. Thai has always been one of my favorite things to go out to eat for in New Haven, so I'm excited to see what it's like here. 

Well, I suppose I should do something that resembles work. My company has a lot of plans for me over the next 6 months, so even though it seems to be getting off to a slow start today, I fully expect to be quite busy for the entirety of my stay here.

I'm Flying! (Day 1) - edited

Ed note: I wrote too much. Here is a shortened, more interesting post.

I'd never been on an international flight before, and now I've been on two. The first one was from JFK to London (Heathrow) and the second was from London to Singapore. After flying internationally, I can honestly say it's not as bad as you might think, but it's still long and tedious and I look forward to the day when they invent the transporter.

Things to note while flying:

- Fast Bag drop can take an hour. I have no idea how they can call that "fast."
- There are no clocks in airports.

The flight was quick, relatively speaking - it was about 6 hours. It took us 35 minutes to be cleared for take-off, however, and there was a great deal of turbulence in the middle of the flight. All in all, we lost 2 hours or so with delays and such.

London (Heathrow) was about the biggest airport I could imagine. I had to take a train IN the airport to another part of the airport to take a bus to get to a different terminal. My first flight was delayed so much that my expected 4 hour stopover turned into exactly enough time to get my boarding pass, get through security, and then wait for 3 minutes before boarding my plane.

I met Mathew at the gate. It was good to see him after nearly two weeks apart. :-) We didn't originally have seats together but the steward found us two unclaimed seats and we got to sit together. Yeah! Our neighbor there was a woman from Australia who had been living for 2 years in Japan teaching English. She was nice. We didn't speak much until the end but she was very accommodating when we had to get out to use the bathroom.

QANTAS airlines fed us constantly, starting with wine, then lunch, then ice cream, then a snack pack, then cocoa with a real marshmallow or peppermint tea, then breakfast. The food was not horrible, but not great. The flight was uneventful otherwise, and we landed safely.

Immigration was a piece of cake - he asked us, "What are you doing in Singapore?" Mathew answered, "Work & travel," and he stamped us both for 90 days. That was it. All the freaking out about needing return tickets and needing money in the bank and work passes, all of it, for nothing. All we needed was the address of where we were staying.

Customs waved us through, too. We didn't even have to stop at all. Just whoosh! Right on through. I wish I had known, I would have brought one or two things that I left back in the states for fear of customs.

Dave (Mathew's coworker, a nice Irish fellow who will be staying with us for 2 weeks) met us right by customs and we grabbed a taxi. The taxi was tricked out in holographic stickers on some of the panels, it had a plant growing from the rear view mirror, and it had funky red seat covers. The cabbie didn't speak to us at all, and our apartment was about 10 minutes from the airport.

The apartment was simple enough to get into - keycards with electronic bits that unlock the front gate and also automatically bring the elevator to your floor. You cannot take the elevator without waving the card, either. It just won't work.

The entire apartment, which is a reasonably large 3 bedroom (+ 1) is entirely decorated out of IKEA catalogs. (Pictures to follow). And it's all white. White drapes, white couch, white coffee table, white chairs, white lamps, white floors, white walls - it's all white. Really crazy. White, white, white, white. I think I'm going to buy some cheap lampshades and pillows for the couch that are NOT white. The only things that aren't white in this place are one rug that's red, and one chair that's black that has a dead animal of some kind on it as a throw.

The +1 is a maid's quarters, and a bathroom next to it. I don't think I'd let Daisy live in a room that small, in truth. And the bathroom is smaller, and includes a shower. (Pictures & video to follow.)

We were quite tired and filthy, so we took a shower and laid down for a bit. Afterwards, we decided to explore the mall across the street. It was about 7 stories, with maybe 10 shops or so on each level. There were a bunch of food shops outside of it and a few inside. We found an electronics store, a video game store, and a few clothes shops. We decided to grab some lunch because it was about 11am and we were hungry. We found a little food court in the mall and I ordered the infamous Chicken Rice. He had fried Wontons - both of us got some sort of clear broth with them which we didn't expect. I also had a mango juice and he had Coke. The chicken rice was more complex than I expected. The sauce on the chicken was good and the rice had a nice subtle flavor. Mathew's noodles were also great. The mango juice was actually mango pineapple juice, and it was really good. The reason I mentioned the Coke, though, was because it was sugar-based Coke, not corn syrup based Coke. He said it tasted the same, though. I guess his palate isn't as refined as some. ;-)

We headed back to the apartment and then met up with Dave. We went over with him to a technology center to attempt to buy an A/C adapter for my computer (because I left it in the states, wouldn't you know). It turns out that they cost S$150 (which is insane), and only one shop in the 10 storey building packed wall to wall with every kind of technology you can imagine sold it.

They saw us as tourists and immediately try to sell us everything. The whole place is ceiling to floor packed with people and nothing over $30 has a price tag on it. PSPs are everywhere and in every color - gold, pink, even Simpsons yellow. EVERYTHING comes in pink. Mice, laptop stands, laptops (pink AND lizard skin texturized), cameras, headphones, memory cards, everything. I've never seen so many things in pink. I hope to go back there and take some pictures of the place. It's really something else.

We found our first hawker center outside of the technology mall - and we each ordered handmade juice from a juice vendor. I had lemonade, which they called Lemon juice, and Mathew had real mango juice. S$3 for the two of us. S$2 for his, S$1 for mine. Some of the best lemonade I've ever had - not too sweet, not too tart. And his mango juice was at the perfect ripeness. Unbelievable. They had squids hanging from the shop stands and purple dragon fruits and dried mushrooms and everything was about $3 or $4 for a meal. I can't wait to try everything.

We were really really really exhausted at this point and left Dave at the technology center. We made our way back to the SMRT and on the train saw a bizarre scene with a sleeping man. He was Asian, in his 20's or early 30's, and was taking up 4 seats, sleeping. At some point he rolled over and his cell phone fell on to the ground. Another passenger picked it up and placed it on him, sort of pushing it into him in an angry attempt to wake him. It didn't work. Another passenger lightly kicked his foot. Still, nothing. At some point he coughed, which really annoyed the surrounding passengers who covered their own mouths and turned away. After a few stops, a transit authority official stepped onto our car and attempted to wake the sleeping man. The transit official shook the guy by the shoulder, touched his neck, tried all sorts of things. The man would not awaken. He finally picked the guy up into a sitting position, and the man REMAINED sleeping. Using his walkie talkie, the transit guy called another transit guy who met us about a stop later and entered our car. Within seconds the two transit guys had the man barely on his feet and were carrying him/escorting him off of the train, holding his shoes and his cellphone. The man was still not awake on the bench as they tried to get him to put on his shoes as we pulled out of the station.

We finally got back to the apartment and fell asleep. VERY asleep. We slept for nearly 14 hours, all told - from 4pm until 6am. I think that's going to help a lot with the jet lag, though we'll see. A few days and we should be all set.

Welcome to OMG Singapore!!

Welcome to our blog. :-) This should hopefully be a vehicle for keeping in touch with everyone back in the states - we hope to entertain you, share with you, and bridge some of the 2500+ mile gap.