We have finally gotten around to exploring this part of Singapore; it’s where the old Malaysian rulers of Singapore used to live, next to the Sultan Mosque, below: There’s a network of streets with traditional shop houses on them (very long houses about half a block deep, that are/were shops or warehouses on the first […]
We went to Bali last week, which is a mere 2.5 hour plane trip from Singapore. I’ve now been to Indonesia, which for some reason is as far away as you can get on my mental horizon – maybe because of all those primitive carvings on exhibit in museums that only show that aspect of […]
I have occasionally bemoaned the fact that I am the housekeeper in a large apartment that has both white tile floors and geckos. Geckos are harmless, slightly squishy little reptiles that lay their eggs in unobtrusive corners and eat insects in the house. (Hooray! Despite our best efforts and the weekly thermal fogging, there are […]
It’s the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, and you know what that means – Moon Cakes! Buy them for your friends and family! Spend $50 in a single receipt and get this free Mooncake Thumb Drive! Or at least that was the come-on at our local mall. We’re only 2 weeks into mooncake season, and alas, […]
It’s a strange thing, but the longer I live in Singapore the less interest I have in Chinese food. Or Indian food. Or Malaysian, Thai or Vietnamese food. Maybe it’s advanced homesickness (certainly possible) or maybe it’s that there’s so much of this food all over the place – availability breeds contempt? Anyway, by chance […]
A Singaporean friend of mine has to travel to Pakistan and Bangladesh a lot for business. It’s dangerous these days, what with suicide bombers and fundamentalist Islam in the ascendant. Karachi is especially perilous, apparently. So here’s his strategy in dialogue form, as he reports it, featuring that most Singaporean obsession, food: “Hi. I’m your […]
We were given free tickets to a student-association dinner in a nice hotel, so we went. Interesting experience. The crowd was mostly students, of course, and that’s great. They’d worked hard to find sponsors for a high-end social experience they could share, in the ballroom of a downtown hotel, and they provided the entertainment as […]
Cafe Trung Nguyen opened a third outlet in April on Raffles Boulevard: it’s #01-09 Marina Square. This is in addition to the one on the second floor of Liang Court Mall, and the one in the departure lounge of Changi Airport’s Terminal 2. Let joy be unconfined! Let the coffee flow like water! Let everyone […]
May seems to be the season for large tree-borne fruits to ripen. The university is built on land that was once a durian orchard, so in a few parts of campus you can see very large spiky durians hanging perilously high. Old inhabitants of the neighborhood will start to congregate underneath these trees in early […]
This is dragonfruit, a which grows on cacti in Thailand, or so I’m told. And it does look like cactus fruit in its scaly rind. The inside comes in two colors: basic white, and amazing killer pink. The pink has a more acidic and interesting flavor, and makes any smoothie it’s blended into a lurid […]