Singapore Sixty-Years Ago: Palau Ubin

Today is a public holiday in Singapore, it's Deepvali, the Hindu New Year, so school is closed. I decided to make this a "holi-stay" weekend, so I went sight seeing throughout Singapore. Thursday night I hit up Chijmes, a hotspot for expats and tourists--it's a variety of restaurants, bars and shops on the site of an old cathedral. Mansita, Antoinnette and I ate tapas there. You can read about Saturday on my post entitled, "A Good Day." On Sunday, I went to the Changi Prison Museum, where I learned about the Japanese occupation of Singapore during WWII, and life as a POW in the gaol. Then I hopped a bum-boat to Palau Ubin, an island off the coast of Singapore. There are about 100 inhabitants that remain on the island, still living as if it were Singapore 60 years ago, living in Kelongs and bungalows amidst the wildlife. I went with my playwriting and screenwriting professors. We rented bikes and explored the island, seeing quarries and swamps and wetlands. We saw lizards and flying monkeys. The following is a pictorial guide to my day on the island.

This first picture is a product of the camera flying out of my hands as I'm flying down a steep hill on my bike. I think the picture came out beautifully...like a watercolor or impressionist painting!

Steph's Guide to Food in Singapore

I’ve been getting requests from my regular readers to write a blog post on food in Singapore. So to appease the fans, I have come up with a sort of guide to eating.

There is no real defining characteristic of Singaporean food—Singapore is made up of various ethnicity's, and the food is reflected in the different cultural representations. The most prominent culinary influences are from Malay, Chinese, and Indian traditions. Singaporean food is a combination of these pallets.

Nasi, Malay for rice, and Nee, Malay for noodles, are two of the most common ingredients in food.

Chicken and Rice is a signature Singaporean dish, usually garnished with slices of cucumber. Satay, or spicy meat skewers, are also very popular. Singapore is also known for its Chili Crabs, which I haven’t tried yet, and laska, a noodle soup.

I’ve noticed that egg is used in a lot of dishes as an added ingredient. Also, it is very common to throw chili’s into the food. This is a great addition to any dish, but it is not for the faint of heart.

Chili Sauce is also used regularly as a condiment, especially with Western food. Of late, I have been enjoying chili sauce with much of my food, usually French fries or hash browns, or anything that needs extra flavor. It has quite the kick.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures here is Kaya Toast—which consists of two pieces of bread, toasted, with a spread of coconut jam in between. Unfortunately, I think what probably makes it so good is that they layer it with a slab of butter. Kaya toast is often served with coffee or tea (usually milk tea, which is very sweet), and one or two soft-boiled eggs. You can find these at the Kopitiums or even at local food chains devoted to serving Kaya Toast.

If you want your food to go, you order it for “take away.” This usually means, that if you’re at a hawker or café, they’ll pour your drink into a plastic bag, with draw-strings, and a straw. Or, if you’re at a food court or chain restaurant, they’ll give you a typical fountain soda cup, but put the cup in a plastic bag with handles. OR, and this is my favorite method, they create and attach a plastic handle to the cup so that you can just carry the cup as if it were the bag. (If this is confusing to anyone, let me know and I’ll take pictures next time.)

Chinese food is very popular here. I’ve come to like Dim Sum a lot, which is basically a variety of dumplings. My favorite is what I like to call the “soup dumplings” (somehow, they have managed to put soup broth inside the dumplings, and once you take your first bite, it flows out, so you have to be careful not to squirt the soup everywhere. It’s still a mystery to me how they get that soup in there!) It is common (and quite tasty) to eat the dumplings with soy sauce topped with ginger.

There’s a good, cheap dim sum restaurant next door to my HDB, Swee Choon Dim Sum. It is open very late, and my roommates and I get laughed at cause we sometimes go there two, three times in the night, especially when we’re “studying.” Food breaks are our favorite way to procrastinate.

I’m getting accustomed to using chopsticks. I will be honest, I’m not very good at it, but I’m learning. I find you just have to hold them and use them the way that is most comfortable for you, so that eating will be the easiest and therefore most efficient.

And of course we can’t forget Indian Food. I live in an Indian food haven, which is a heaven. There are excellent restaurants ranging from the basic local joints to some fancier restaurants, but there is an array of both North and South Indian food.

North Indian food tends to consist of thicker sauces, such as the popular Tandori Chicken dish, and is often accompanied with bread, such as Naan, cooked in a clay oven.
South Indian food, emphasizes rice over bread, and includes many vegetarian dishes. South Indian food tends to be spicier, especially with the addition of lentils, curry leaves and coconut milk. Thali is a popular South Indian dish, which consists of small portions of various dishes and condiments. I love Indian food, and I love the process of eating it! It’s all about combining tastes and textures—and using your hands!

A favorite restaurant of my roommates is an Indian restaurant that serves primarily Western food. It’s called, Salvation. This place is like some surreal world. It plays cheesy music that sounds like its straight out of Top Gun. Covers of 1980s pop music turned elevator jazz. And they have it on a loop with the same five songs playing over and over again until you want to scream! The décor consists of bright pink and orange polka dots—giant polka dots. The waiters are all incredibly attractive—tall skinny guys with Hollywood smiles and the wind blowing in their hair. They serve food such as the Kidney-bean Quesadillas, which I know they make from scratch, but they won't put kidney beans on their nachos if you ask. This place is so random, and we’re always on the verge of not being invited back, for one reason or other, and sometimes we’re even too embarrassed to come back, but for some reason, we just can’t stay away.

I also like this vegetarian restaurant next door to me, Food #03, it has a very artsy clientele, it’s like that coffee shop that you always picture artists circles and writers sitting in dark corners writing with the coffee stains on their pages. Well I’m that writer. The food is decent and the staff is really friendly—they get to know you.

Now let me define for you the different types of places to eat.
Hawker Centers consist of a lot of local stalls condensed into a relatively small space. This is where you can get a meal for $3 or $4 Sing dollars and a beer for $5 or $6. They’re very local, and each stall is specific to a certain food genre. There are separate stalls for juice (you can get fresh watermelon, kiwi, apple-pear, sugar cane, lime, etc etc); beverages; and various types of Singaporean/Malay dishes. Each stall has their specialty. The hawker center across the street from me has a stall that has dishes that all consist of crocodile in one form or other. Hawkers are appealing for their incredible prices, and often delicious food, but they tend to be the least healthy of options.

Kopitiums (or kedia kopi) are like upscale hawker centers. Kopi, I believe, means coffee in Malay. My guidebook says Kedai Kopi’s are “no-frills neighborhood cafes that usually offer a limited range of dishes at cheap prices, but are not much by way of service and ambiance. However, culinary standards are reasonably high.” I guess that’s as good of a definition as any. I tend to prefer the Kopitiums over the hawkers, I guess they feel more intimate. The Kopitium next to my HDB is situated in an alley with plastic chairs lined up (oh, restaurants in Singapore are furnished by cheap plastic and Ikea furniture, through and through) and there are two TVs there, so locals are there watching soap operas and football in volumes.

Food Courts are what you find in shopping malls. There tends to be a variety of Chinese, Japanese, and Western dining venues throughout. And there are malls on every street corner, and even more in between street corners. So you can imagine, these are the every day places to eat. I would say on average I eat more in the malls than not, not by preference, but that’s where the “choices” are. My favorite lately has been a Japanese fast food chain, Yoshinoya. I like their beef vegetable bowl. Especially when I can get their student discount on the weekdays. A lot of restaurants here have student discounts, but they’ll only give them to you if you’re at specific Singaporean schools. However, some do accept the Student pass (my visa) as an acceptable means to the discount. I tend to favor such places.

Oh, and then there are Restaurants. These tend to have overpriced food, so I tend to avoid them, except occasionally.

You don’t really need to tip here, which makes eating more economical. The food courts/restaurants will add a GST, but other than that, you’re not really tipping.

Foods I miss the most:

1. Salads
(ooh, especially the big salad bars—lettuce just doesn’t feel fresh here)

2. Sandwiches (especially deli’s, etc.)

3. Guacamole—and good Mexican food like burritos (tear, Chipotle) and loaded nachos

A Good Day

Today was simply delightful. I started my day with a couple sets of tennis and a dip in the pool. I was lucky enough to be invited by one of the film faculty to play tennis, and his complex has a really nice pool. It feels like a resort, (see photos) and it felt like I was on vacation! It was so relaxing, and yet, I stayed by the pool and got several hours of work done. I then took another dip in the pool and headed to Bugis (it’s one of the many shopping malls) to eat and write some more. I had Kaya Toast (look out for an upcoming blog post on food!) and tea. This evening I met up with two new friends, (actors I’ve been working with in our drama labs), Stuart and Andrew. We ate cheap sushi and watched Blindness, a film where everyone in the world goes blind, except one person. Mansita and Antoinette, two of my friends/classmates, joined us. The five of us had a great discussion about the movie, afterwards, and then, Atoninette and I went to Southbridge Jazz Club, where I was pleasantly surprised with the caliber of the music and atmosphere. It was a traditional jazz club setting. We heard a very talented combo of piano, bass, drums and vocals. I will definitely be seen there again.

One of the things that is most notably missing from my life here is the piano. I have no real access to one. This could be one of the reasons I’ve had trouble focusing! The piano is a means of de-stressing, of emitting emotion and releasing energy, allowing me to focus. Also, the piano is a great form of expression, and a creative outlet, something to get the juices flowing. I can’t wait until I can play the piano again!

A Day In the Life of Steph

Here's an example of what my daily life is like, a run-down of my day:

0900 hour: wake up, shower, rush to the McDonald's across the street. (Yes, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but its close, its quick, and the Cappuccinos are good!)

0930 hour: entered a cab, wherein the driver proceeded to ask me out. "Would you like to pull over and have breakfast with me?"

0945 hour: arrived at school early to model/"act" in a digital stills photo shoot for a first year's film exercise. (The stills represent the frames of their film.) My character gets set on fire in the jungle by the vengeful wife of the man I was having an affair with. Naturally.

1100 hour: screenwriting workshop. Watched the movie, Secretary. Amazing.

1300 hour: lunch. need i say more?

1400 hour: administrative assistance work for the school. excel + gchat = going insane.

1700 hour: played me some ping-pong, had me some fun.

1800 hour: crashed a second year film class on Editing--fascinating and fun.

2100 hour: rehearsal for the play I'm in. Antionette's ten minute:  two self absorbed people pick each other up in a bank robbery.

2200 hour: foosball show down. who could ask for anything more?!

2300 hour: the trek home begins, a detour to a hawker for wings and a beer.

Asides of a Cab Driver

Taxi cab rides can be really frustrating. Many of the drivers have no idea where anything in the city is. It’s not like in New York when you get in a cab and say take me to the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue and they automatically know how to get you there. Here, you have to tell them how to get to places and they still don’t know where they’re going. I often have to take out a map or ask them for their map and look it up myself in Chinese characters I don’t even understand, hoping my cursory knowledge of the city will suffice. Sometimes I think the cabbies take advantage of the fact that they don’t completely understand you and may not know where they’re going, by making a big deal about not understanding or knowing directions. With the meter running they’ll pull over to the side of the road and say, “oh, mrt. m – r – t. Orchard MRT? I take you to Orchard MRT?”
“No, I don’t want to go to Orchard, I want to go to the Redhill MRT. Drive down Tanglin and I’ll show you where it is.”
“Tanglin. Tan-glin. Oh, oh. Orchard MRT. I take you there.”
“Sir, please just drive and I’ll tell you when we get there.”
“Map. Show on map.”
“The meter’s running, Uncle.”
“Must look up in map.”
The meter’s at 5.50 and we haven’t even gone anywhere yet!

The other extreme is getting a really friendly driver who wants to chat you up. They often have funny and sometimes even sage comments to make. I love the drivers who listen to the radio. I often sing along and they get a kick out of it. Sometimes they’ll sing with me. Once, driving to school with Susie and Wai, the driver didn’t have a radio, so we all sang a Capella as if we were the radio, an out of tune, out of sync, out of pitch radio, but a radio none-the-less. He loved it. He sang along with us. “Sha la la la la la la.” Mostly bad 80’s music.

If any conversation is had, the opening question is almost always, "Where you from?" And as soon as I confess, it's always followed up by, "ooh, what do you think about Obama?" I find it so fascinating, that talking about Singapore politics is one step away from a capital crime, but talking about American politics is ordinary fare. I guess when you can't talk about your own, you find an outlet in talking about others.

One driver gave my roommates and I a whole spiel on love. He said you wont find it unless you actively look for it, unless you put yourself out there and take a risk and try it out. He also said the passion part of it only lasts awhile, so you need to be comfortable with yourself and know yourself in order to continue loving another. He said, “look into his eyes. You will know from his eyes.”

Then one time we were riding back from the beach (don’t get too excited, it’s not all that glamorous) after filming a directing exercise for Susie: it was me, Susie, and her DP. We get in the car with all this equipment. The taxi driver turns to Susie’s DP and says, “Did you just return from camping?” And he says, “Yes.”
“Were you comfortable?”
“Yes, very.”
“How many nights did you stay?”
“Oh, just one.”
This was way too much fun to not chime in. I turn to the DP and say, “Do you know what my favorite part of the camping trip was? … That late night swim we took.”
“Yes, you need to be more careful next time.” He says.
“Well I didn’t know the public decency laws would be so strict!”

And it continued and continued until the DP had the cab driver convinced that he was in med school studying to enter a new field of psychological gynecology.

This morning, Wai had to get to school by 9:30 to TA for her directing professor. She was nervous, because she didn’t want to be late and we were really cutting it close. “She fired her last TA for being late.”
I made a point of stressing with the cab driver that we had to go the fastest route. He refused to take us the straight way in which we requested. He swore he had a faster, better way. As we’re driving in circles around the Botanical Gardens, he’s asking us about being students. Finally I say, “She’s the teacher, she has to be there.”
He cracks up. “Teacher? The teacher can’t be late, lah. Ahahahahaha. The teacher late. Tell them you in a meeting.”
Wai’s says, “I’m not the teacher, I’m the assistant to the teacher.”
I say, “Just tell her you were in a meeting. You were meeting with your roommate to pick out the best ties to wear today.” (It’s “dress like Bobby day” on campus—Bobby is a professor who’s known for his hippy-like business casual. He wears an unbuttoned button down shirt over a white wife beater, a skinny tie and sneakers.)
Wai says, “You just can't say those things to a woman with an Oscar!”

Ah, but let us have no more talks of taxis.

Que Bella!

I met an Italian guy at Starbucks. I wasn’t trying to meet the guy, he just started talking to me when Wai went to the bathroom. He said he was having trouble making a CV. He’s a photographer and he wants to find a job. I said, “Oh, I’ll help you with your CV, I’m surprisingly good at getting jobs I’m not remotely qualified for.” Apparently, it was as easy as that. He insisted I give him his email address so that he could send it to me, and he showed me his photography website, and I must say, his photos were quite impressive. We met a week later. We talked over coffee—I could only understand about 1/3 of what he said. But he was clearly smart. He showed me a campus, I let him beat me at foosball, and then we had a beer. I had a meeting to be at by 2pm and he knew this. He said, “Stephanie, I’d love to sit here and talk to you forever, but I’m afraid I’ll make you late!”

He had the beautiful long, blond Italian hair, he had the sexy Italian accent, and he had the talent to boot, but you know what? I didn’t feel anything. Other than, oh wow he’s really attractive and obviously interested. Therein lies the problem. Interested. Don’t get me wrong, I love it when a guy is interested, especially when I’m interested in him. Two often I find I have chemistry with someone, but major obstacles in the way: girlfriend; overbearing job; living on the other side of the world. You get my drift. But without that chemistry, without a little ounce of excitement, the hottest guy in the world could want to buy me coffee and take beautiful photographs of me, but what would be the point? I’d only be pretending.