Probably the World's Friendliest Cabby...

I wish I’d learned his name. Cabbies in Singapore are in general pretty friendly I’d say, quite knowledgeable about the roads, and unlike in many other countries, they don’t try to rip you off. They charge you what the meter says and the meter doesn’t lie. But all in all, taking a cab in S’pore is not usually a remarkable experience. Last week, however, something remarkable did happen. Jennani and I were going to a National Day party.

It was dark and thus harder for cab drivers to see potential customers. Fortunately for us, I am one of the few exceptions to this rule as I am whiter than most people have any right to be and I tend to let off my own ethereal light source. In the words of a dear woman I met in India: “You’re coconut white, madam!” (This is all particularly disconcerting in pictures where I find I have that same semi-creepy illumination that the kid from the Sixth Sense had going on.) Thus once we hailed a taxi and got in, our cabby friend immediately noted his surprise that there were two of us. (“From far away, I saw just one! But now there are two!”) We laughed, acknowledged that this happens often enough and gave him the directions to our destination, when suddenly he turned around and offered us each a handful of green apple candies.

(Somewhere my mother is cringing right now – particularly because as a child I never had a proper grasp on the whole “Don’t take candy from strangers” rule. After hours spent imploring me never to accept candy offered by someone I did not know, she discovered that I had devised a way around this rule: to ask strangers for candy before they offered it. She’s recounted to me an incident at the Museum of Natural History where I ran away and asked a schoolteacher leading a field trip for some of the sweets she was giving out to her students. There was also another slightly mortifying encounter with the mayor of Denver—to my immense displease he only gave away pencils. But apparently these incidents were mild in light of the fact that I had an unseemly habit of removing my bathing suit and begging from the snack bar whenever we went to the local swimming pool.)

But this cab driver seemed friendly enough and since the candies were in sealed packages we took a handful each and thanked him. After a few moments of chatting with him, he told us that he had worked for many years but had retired from his job ten years earlier. When we asked him how he’d become a cab driver, he explained that he got bored sitting at home all day and decided to become a cabby. When the topic of food came up a moment later he quickly asked, “Oh, are you hungry? Have a biscuit!” And lunging for the glove compartment, he produced two packages of biscuits. We assured him that we were going to eat momentarily but he urged us to hold on to them in case we got hungry. I was a bit wary, but not wanting to rebuff the kind man’s offers, Jen and I took the biscuits. The remainder of our short drive, he lightheartedly conversed with us and when we got out to pay, he rounded down the price of our fare significantly (something cab drivers don’t usually do)!

To be honest, I forgot about him completely, until the next day when I was out running around Singapore for a church event and became quite hungry. I had no time to stop for food, but as I was scrounging around my bag in the desperate hope of finding something mildly edible – a few stray sesame seeds, some old mints, a scrap of leather to chew on – when lo and behold, I came across the biscuits and sour apple candies, complements of the generous cabby. I now hold a sort of reverence for the man. Perhaps this friendly cab driver is a modern day superhero, saving Singapore one hungry commuter at a time?



Notice any similarities? We call it the "Patrick-Swayze-in Ghost" look.

Frog Legs? Yes, please.

Some Singaporeans have gently chided me for not being more adventurous with the local cuisine. So recently I've tried to man-up (woman-up?) and try new things. My pastor got me to eat chicken feet (it improves your handwriting, didn't you know?) and urged me to have some friends take me out for frog legs. I had some serious reservations (I mean, how often is frog on the menu in the U.S.?), but eventually I swallowed my fear and asked my small group if they'd help culture me. So last night we went to a place in Geylang, where I played ang mo-tourist for the evening, taking pictures of everything - buildings, cars, signs, durian, old men.

I had been told (warned) beforehand that some of the shops which sell frog legs actually have the live frogs in tanks out front; probably to assure customers that their legs are, indeed, quite fresh. But when we arrived at the frog leg shop, there were no frogs to be seen. This was when I made a grave mistake: out of sheer curiosity, I asked to see where the live frogs were kept. The man running the shop looked at me like I was a bit off, then eyeing the camera in my hand, he shrugged and pointed to a hawker centre across the street. One of my friends and I wandered over and began our search for the frogs, eventually meandering through part of the kitchen and washroom, but to no avail. Finally we asked another woman if she could help us and, with an expression similar to that of the first man's, she pointed to an alcove in the back of the shop which we'd passed several times. It took us a moment to realize that the large crates stacked against the wall contained our next meal and that the suspicious looking bucket, instruments, and gloves stacked next to them (over a red-stained drain) were where our frogs met their untimely ends. Basically, we were standing in the slaughtering room. Disturbed, we thanked her and quickly left.

Across the street, I pulled myself together and after a moment of hesitation (and some prayer) we ate our frog legs and rice porridge. I won't lie, even after the discovery of the slaughter room, the frog legs tasted really good. I've mentioned earlier that I am not the most adventurous of eaters, but it really wasn't bad! Actually, if it weren't for the fact that there is significantly less meat to be had on a frog than on a chicken, I'd even venture to say that frog is the better of the two! It isn't as chewy as chicken, rather its texture is more like fish but without the fishy taste! Served with ginger and some greens, it was delicious!

Ironically, as we were walking back to the MRT we discovered another frog leg shop, which did have live frogs on display out front. There were two tanks, one of which contained about two dozen of the medium-sized amphibians we'd just eaten. But the other tank contained two HUGE frogs. These guys were the size of smallish rabbits. The two shop managers, noting my curiosity, invited me to take a picture and told me the big ones were just a few months old. I asked them if the large frogs were for eating and one manager smiled and said "No, they're for feeding." Naturally, I thought this meant they were pets, so I asked what their names were. The two men stared at me, glanced at each other, and burst out laughing. Evidently, this was a weird question. Outside the shop a table of bemused men, who'd overheard my exchange with the managers, began to animatedly mime eating frog legs.

My small group girls told me that the frog-leg shop owners are not usually so obliging and suggested that perhaps overly-curious ang mo don't turn up that often.

Next on the menu: pig intestine and turtle soup!

(I think I'll call him Dave)

A Day In the Life: Koreans, Ang Mo, and the Chinese Edward Cullen

My friend, housemate, and (formerly) my only blog-follower, Jennani, suggested that I record some of my average-odd life moments from Singapore (like my misadventures from Texas). Here are some from last week:

Sunday:
Spent 3 hours learning dance moves to Korean worship song. Discovered I cannot dance and have absolutely no rhythm. However, I did achieve maximum level of abdominal fitness, as I could not turn to one side for the remainder of the day.

Monday:
Took Korean tourists to the zoo where we were dive-bombed by bats, learned how to say Hippo in Korean (HAMA!), and attempted to convince other ang mo* tourists that I am actually a pale Korean.

Tuesday:
Discovered that some of my friends and coworkers have been playing a game that we shall call “Get the Ang Mo to Eat Weird Stuff!” (With me being the "ang mo") Evidently it is a source of great amusement to many. Thus far, my pastor is in the lead with chicken feet.

Wednesday:
Was followed and then chased down by a man on a motorbike who asked me for directions to Clementi MRT and if he could “know me better.” Laughed then panicked, ran away and hid.

Thursday:
Spent ten minutes searching for a mug for my tea and found one wrapped in an inch of saran-wrap in office pantry. One hour later discovered it said: “Shania Twain Come on Over Sembawang” on the side. Have decided I will use this mug for the remainder of the year.

Friday:
Was made aware of the fact that I make odd sounds from time to time, by my co-worker who has taken it upon himself to mimic these sounds for five minutes after each one…and sometimes combines them all for an awesome symphony of awkwardness. (Note: said co-worker is more than twice my age)

Saturday:
Got the ‘Edward-Cullen-in-biology-lab’ stare down (for anyone who’s seen the timeless and extremely edifying film, Twilight) for five minutes from an old Chinese man who was sitting next to me on the MRT. It was every bit as uncomfortable as I’d imagined. Debated whether he thought I smelled good or wanted me dead.

Exhibit A: Edward Cullen Stare

A Venture in Moving (and the use of Chainsaws)

I’ve had to move a few times in my life and it’s never a pretty process. Stacks of boxes everywhere start out like one of those funhouse mazes and typically end with someone’s smothered cries for help from under a heap of dusty magazines, stuffed animals, and a paper mache model of a volcano. Usually you end up finding hidden treasure troves of unwanted (sometimes unidentifiable) goodies that you never remember owning. For example, when my mother moved about a year ago, she hired a group of movers to help her unearth the mountains of boxes in the storage space that we like to call Purgatory. She noticed one man was struggling to carry a particularly heavy box and upon opening it they discovered that it was full of Barbie dolls. None of my sisters or myself ever really played with dolls, so that fact that we have an entire box full of Barbies is unexplainable (although we did enjoy putting make-up on the cat). We probably could have explained away the weirdness of the box’s contents to the movers if it weren’t for the fact that my mother made another interesting discovery half an hour later: A large brown box entirely devoted to rocks. Yes, that’s right. It was a box of rocks. Why we had saved a box of rocks is beyond me. Needless to say, the movers were a little disgruntled that they were being asked to move boxes of rocks and Barbie dolls around. But hopefully you get my point: moving can be both a treacherous and baffling endeavor.

When I found out that my office in Singapore had to move locations to a new building nearby, I figured it wouldn’t be that big of a production. After all, it’s not a house packed with years (or even generations) of weird family possessions. But nothing could have prepared me for the way Singapore does moving. You see, it started out quite normal. We packed things in boxes, labeled them and taped them up. Then the movers came and took the boxes to our new location. When the movers returned for a second load they began to bring over the furniture – still normal. It wasn’t until their third round that they began, as it appeared to me, to vandalize office property. By vandalize I mean, dismantling the air conditioning units, taking down an entire wall of mirrors, and…wait for it…removing the doors. As I found out, we were taking the doors with us. I commented on the peculiarity of this practice to my coworkers who looked at me in wonder as if to ask: “You mean, in America you don’t take your doors with you when you move?”

I was a bit dubious that our new office would look anything like an office when we finally followed the movers over. I imagined instead, that it would look more like the remains of a building that a hurricane has swept through – with odd objects, parts of air conditioning hosing, furniture, and – don’t forget - doors, laying about. And I was kind of right, but it only took a few days, about $100 worth of masking tape, some bruised shins, and maybe ten shots of espresso to get everything back in order. Not completely to my surprise, the objects that gave us the most trouble were the cabinets. We’re not talking about measly bookshelves here; we’re talking about 8-foot tall solid wood (plastic? Who knows? It was heavy!) cabinets. Our old office had a loading elevator the size of a room in which the movers were able to move these bulky pieces of furniture down one story and to the moving van. The loading lift in our new office is the size of an average business elevator. Needless to say the cabinets didn’t fit in the lift. They also didn’t fit in the stairway. (Which would have been an interesting endeavor if the movers had dared to carry these beastly things up the six stories to our office). I assumed we’d have to sell the cabinets and find smaller one’s that we could either carry on the lift or assemble in the office. I assumed wrong. Instead, one of the movers went out and bought a chainsaw and chopped the cabinets in half in the parking lot– as if to greet our new office mates with a hearty,” Hello! We’re your new neighbors and we like to destroy furniture! Thanks for having us!” I tried to act like this was all totally normal, since no one else seemed to mind. Maybe Singapore is just the place to be if you have a personal attachment to your door and like taking chainsaws to heavy office furniture.

Running At Midnight

Singapore has a lot of good food. Now I’m going to be honest here – I have a crippling fear of trying new foods (particularly when they still have faces). In the last five months I have managed to break out of my comfort zone just enough to discover several dishes I really like…so that I can eat them on a day-to-day basis without having to partake in anymore dietary adventures. One of my go-to food providers has been a vegetarian stall in the hawker centre below my office building. For weeks on-end I consumed this “vegetarian food” by the chopstick-load…that is until I discovered that most of the dishes contain meat. Yes, vegetarian food made from meat. Don’t get me wrong - I am not a veggie-exclusive individual, but I am affronted that both the stall’s sign and the Chinese uncle who runs it would lie to me about my lunchtime cuisine. (Although in retrospect, I am not sure the uncle knows what I’m saying – he just grunts and nods whenever I ask him questions). In response to this "betrayal" and as a means of promoting honest advertising, I have decided to boycott the vegetarian stall. Also, the veggies are all deep fried and make me gain weight like crazy. So far, I have held out for a whole two weeks. I’m still going strong and my digestion has improved inordinately. This, however, does not mean that I have put my monstrous consumption of raisin bread, bubble tea, or the peanut sauce that comes with satay, to rest.

Exercising in Singapore is another issue. As you may know, Singapore is hot. Actually, hot is an understatement. Let me put it this way: After five months of living on the equator, I can honestly believe that dressing people in regular office apparel and forcing them to stand in a steam room for several hours would serve as cruel and (highly) unusual punishment. But this seems to apply only to a rare-few and, of course, me. The remainder of Singapore’s population, apparently, does not sweat. I am painfully aware of this fact every time I get on the MRT on my way to work. I’ll be drenched in perspiration, trying to determine the best way to inconspicuously un-stick my shirt from my back while everyone else around me looks totally normal! In fact, they look better than normal. Most of the women look like they're ready for New York's Fashion Week! (To add insult to injury, I am about a foot taller than them and I am afraid to make any sudden movements when the train is crowded for fear of knocking people over.) So while the majority of Singaporeans stroll in wearing their snazzy business-chic outfits and their hair down, looking like they've come in out of temperate seventy degree weather, I look like I’ve just dragged myself out of a lake. It’s sad, but I digress.
.
The problem I faced my first few weeks in Singapore was this: How do you prevent yourself from becoming supersized from delicious, pseudo-veg food (which is appallingly more apparent in a place where you are equal to one-and-a-half normal women in size) while also avoiding extreme dehydration, melting, hysteria, and any other unsightly side effects that accompany exercising in such a hot climate? The solution I found was simple: run at midnight. It’s cooler and there’s no one out to see what a ridiculous sweat-machine you are.

Now, running at midnight was my answer for several weeks, but at last my host-mother (Auntie) asked that I stop my bizarre exercise habits until my mother signs an indemnity form. In the meantime, she has placed a 9pm curfew on my runs so that I don’t get into any trouble. Although, I am beginning to develop a solid argument for why I shouldn’t run until after 9pm — namely, to prevent me from getting anyone else in trouble. Case in point: I frightened three individuals on my last nighttime run. First I startled a young couple that was strolling hand-in-hand, blocking the sidewalk, by saying, “um…excuse me.” Interestingly, the young woman jumped, but it was the guy who screamed like a little girl. Later that same evening I came across a mother walking with her young son. The little boy had run ahead of his mother a ways and before he turned back to look for her, I came running up between them. Unlike the couple, the boy just froze to the spot with a look of sheer terror in his eyes. The poor thing probably thought his mother had morphed into a pale, slippery giant. But the clincher of the evening came as I was letting myself into my flat afterwards and the dear elderly couple that live next door were coming out of their own apartment. The woman took one look at me and said, “Oh my! Is it raining?”

In my opinion, the benefits of running at midnight are quite clear: to prevent Singapore’s children from being emotionally scarred and to stop confusing elderly people about the weather.

11 Months Later...

I am not what you would call a consistent person. I wish I were, but I’m just not. Which is why, almost a year after starting this blog to record my various post-grad adventures, there is only one post. It might be important to add that I am actually living in Singapore now and have been for the last five months. There’s a lot I could probably say about my time living abroad – stories concerning merlionesses, learning about personal-space boundaries (and how far is too far), bubble tea, antisocial people (and awesome people), vegetarian food that’s made from meat, the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte, and what to do when a deluge pours forth - not from the heavens - but from your air conditioning unit. But I won’t. It would take me far too long. Instead, I’ll start from here. But as I said before, I’m not a consistent person. So no promises (Jennani)…

To be fair, I don't know how many people will read this thing anyway. But since my one and only "follower" requested that I revive this blog, I've decided to give it a try. Besides, I turn 23 this month and I am feeling particularly ambitious - perhaps it's time I take a stab at consistency?

Misadventures in Texas

(This was written following my move from Virginia to Texas post-graduation)

Texas Day 1
Woke up at 1pm sick with fever, sore throat, and aches. Resolved to do nothing but watch crappy movies on the lifetime channel.

Texas Day 2
Was alone all day, finally went crazy around 5pm which resulted in me buying and consuming half a carton of TimTams and wandering aimlessly around SuperTarget for an hour. The day was slightly redeemed by talking to Rachel, however, I couldn't move about the house for fear of losing cell reception so I stood motionless in the one spot of the kitchen where I get service, for an hour.

Texas Day 3
In one hour of being on my own I managed to:
1. burn my body so sufficiently that I should be served on a bed of lettuce with a side of cocktail sauce
2. leave my phone on top of my car, which I was abruptly reminded of by the soul-shattering crunch of my phone being flung onto concrete at 40mph
3. grab my keys out of my purse with a little too much enthusiasm, resulting in me punching myself in the face...in front of children

Texas Day 4
Got hit on by a creeper in Starbucks and when I tried to leave the barista told us there was a tornado a few blocks behind us and to go chill in the bathroom for a while...so I got stuck with creeper.

Texas Day 5
Woke up to earth-shattering thunder and lightning directly overhead. It sounded like the sky was splitting open and the Titans were being hurdled at Dallas. Finally fell back to sleep. Woke up at noon and ate remainder of TimTams and bacon.