dee's life, bulleted update

• Friday, 24 jul 2009: we got the cat back. One MONTH in quarantine. Too long, S'pore.
  
  
• We found an apartment. 2 year lease is a leeetle odd but typical here, I am told. We're on the 14th floor and the view is awesome. The landlord seems really cool and I've found a friend in our rental agent. Pics coming, end of next week.
  
  
• I am getting tan. This is WITH sunscreen AND putting up the umbrella on particularly piercingly sunny days. UV rays here curve under umbrellas and go merrily through your shirt, mocking your puny efforts to limit their play. Nyah.
  
  
• IKEA here is pronounced ICK EE AH. Not EYE KEE YAH.
  
  
• Still looking for a good comic book store. Kinokunya has a lousy selection. C. recommends Comics Mart at Serene Center, an expedition is planned soon...

custard apple follow up

OMG FEAKIN BLEAH.

Okay... so, the definition of the word 'good' as uttered by a person who actually EATS durians is DIFFERENT for, like, everyone else on the planet.

(custard apple ref)

around the world, searching for tuna buns

There is a tiny little kiosk in Porter Exchange in Boston that is the best bakery in the world. I forgot the name of it and it doesn't matter anyway because I'm not gonna be back there anytime soon. But they have the softest, springy-est, yeasty-est, most succulently satiny, golden, buttery smooth buns you have ever had in your life. Whether they take the form of a twisted doughnut, bejeweled with coarse sugar like stars, or... BUCKET OF DROOL... the fabled tuna bun... oh you silken temptress, your firm yet yielding sponge.. the perky tang of of your fishy secret heart... ohhhhhh...

What was I talking about... Oh yeah. Anyway...

A local chain here is Breadtalk. This is what I like about Breadtalk: you can smell it before you see it. You can actually follow your nose through a mall or a food court, aroma hanging, snaking in the air Buggs Bunny style until, on the other end of the chain of scent, you find a Breadtalk. Hee, cool.

Breadtalk has tuna buns too. They're good. They're not as good as the little bakery staffed by the shy Japanese man with the adorable little sweather cap and cute smile in Porter Exchange, but they are good. And the also have this thing:

upper right: tuna bun, lower left: floss

What is Floss, an exposé by Dee
Floss is shredded pork that has been spun into something that looks and tastes just a bit like cotton candy.

I am totally not making that up. What you do is, you take a yummy, yeasty bun and you slit it, not all the way through, just enough to get its attention, and then you ladle in some custardy mayonnaise. (Do not become ill! When you think about it what is custard but eggs? And what mayonnaise but egg whites? Abandon your preconceived notions, why shouldn't this work?)

And then you sort of SCHMEEEEER the mayonnaise all over the top of the bun. And then you roll it in floss, in shredded pork.

THE END

A Floss is sweet and porky and fatty and yeasty and good. And, okay, a little weird. You probably shouldn't take these home for later like I did, but should eat them on the spot as soon after the friendly lady in the white apron, cap and mask has assembled one for you, while they are still warm.

Spun pig. Whodathunk.

singapore, beautiful at night

A restaurant hostess waits for customers.

The Fountain of Wealth, street level, after the rain.

when it rains it ...

freakin POURS.

One night, wandering around in city center I know not where, a sudden squall:
We'd come down a street of restaurants, you can see them all there in this shot, tiny little shops, most of whom had a few tables on the side walk out front. One moment you are enjoying a fresh breeze and the next the realization dawns that your breeze has gone all mean and pushy, no playful zephyr but the herald of a storm. People leap up and scatter for shelter...
abandoning their steamboats for the safety of the awnings. If you look closely you can see red-shirted staff dumping food and dishes into plastic tubs, the evening's take a total write-off.

What looks like haze in these photos is a torrent of water, straight up and down like a curtain. Warm as bathwater.

Also, simultaneously EVERY cab in the entire nation is booked, all at once. Ha ha!

now where she at

... now there she go there she go there she go:

People have asked where we are now. Here it is, Pandan Valley condos!

Main gate. LOOK at all these cool palm trees all of whom have distinct names and varieties which I don't know!

(You didn't click that link up there, did you? XD)

soxxxxx... i miss uuuuuuuuuu

I totally just signed up for the gameday audio for Sox games (thanks, p!). I can't believe how much I miss baaaaysballllll. T___T

But why does my PAID subscription have ADS in the stream?? Papa Gino's pizza advert REAL useful over here, guyz. *bleah face*

fruit inflation

Not only are there rambutans, longans and lychees, there are also...

KING rambutans! YOUR HIGHNESS!!

King rambutans are large and somewhat less hairy-scary than regular rambutans and you can eat the seed. Or so says the Fruit Man in HV who gave me these as a sampler.

Also on the plate-- those awesome little mini limes that taste SO good squeezed over one's bee hoon. And behind that... longsats. Actually, 2 different kinds of longsats. Which look more or less exactly the same, not exactly fair cause one of them you can eat the seeds and the other if you eat the seeds you will LOOK LIKE THIS

>.<

and then cry like THIS

T______T

and then the Fruit Man will say, I TOLD you not to eat the seeds of THAT one and then all the ppl who are from here will laugh. Ha ha!

the truth about custard apples

Exotic fruit?

Or...?

sunday morning flower vendor at holland v.

Orchids! :D

i haz exotic fruitz

One of Al's cow orkers brought him a huge bag of these things the other day.

Because she is from here, we actually know what they are and how to eat them (as opposed to the rambutan, longan, lychee confusion, still on-going...)

... anyway, these are mangosteens!

Delicious! And fun! So to eat them, you take the fruit in both hands and SQUESH EET. Which pops open the heavy rind revealing the succulent white flesh within. The red stuff is very bitter so you don't eat that. And it tastes like... mangosteens. Not sure how to describe it, it doesn't taste like anything I've ever eaten before.

Apparently foodies in NYC pay $11 each for these things because they are so exotic and you can only get them in 1 market. So we have roughly 300 bucks worth of mangaosteens. Mmm mm!

canada: celebrated world-wide for its lovely pizza

I was riding around with the real estate agent, Ruth, the other day looking for new lodgings when we paused at a stop sign across from this:

I'm like, OMFG CANADIAN PIZZA bwah! as I whip out the digicamera.

Dee: Hold on, hold on, I have GOT to get a pic of this!
Ruth: o_o?
Dee: (wiping tears) Look! Look at the maple leaf!
Ruth: >.>;;;;
Dee: Bwahahahahha!
Ruth: (thinking) No one will want to rent an apartment to this crazy woman.

the debut of the Awesome Product Names category...

Oh yeah?? No, YOU'RE a cowhead!

prata: life-altering experience at holland v.

So, Holland Village. Where we're staying right now-- in temp housing subsidized by the uni (Pandan Valley Condos ... yes, I had to look up 'pandan'. It's a type of tree)-- is about a 20 minute walk from Holland V., a somewhat well-known destination for nightlife and good food. There are three hawker centers there, a ton of restuarants, a couple of good bars ( Wala Wala for good music and plentious Aussie expats), a wet market during the day and a bunch of shops, including two pet supply stores. There's also a windmill...
... 'cause, you know, HOLLAND.

Anyway, this story is not about Holland Village. This story is about PRATA. This story is about TRUE LOVE. Follow me...



Yes! This! The heavenly stuff on the right on the orange plate. Praaaaaataaaaa! T_______T

What is it? It's only the most delicious thing I've had in... I don't know when. And I've eaten some great food since I've gotten here, believeit. Roti prata is a type of Indian bread that's been PERFECTED by the Singaporeans. I've eaten it twice since I've been here. And annoyed the prata man by hovering over his stall to see how he makes it. It's fascinating.

Tangent but not Rly: The other day we were wandering through a market/hawker center on the ground floor of an extensive HDB when I passed a guy filling up a vast container with little balls of something pale and smooth. Round and round he went, piling the little handfuls of stuff on top of one another in a big spiral. 'Hmm', I said to myself. But I've been saying that non-stop since I got here, so I simply filed the experience away under WTH, I'll figure this out later. Now, later, I know what that was. It was prata dough, hundreds of balls of prata dough, in prep for the next days sales.

Anyway: What you do is this: you get your little ball of dough, which is silky smooth and perfectly elastic-- which means that the prata man must have kneaded the CRAP out of it, talk about hard work-- and you take it and you throw it down on a smooth metal surface and you STREEETCH it. You pull it with your hands till it's thin as tissue, then push it back together, and do this a few times. Then you fold it over on itself into a circle and sort of pat it down. Oh wait, I left out the good part, while you're stretching and folding, between layers, you dip your hand in a big container of ghee and liberally apply-- keeping the layers distinct, incorporating the glorious fat. Then you fling the dough down on a hot griddle. Cook one side, flip it to the other. Then you take it off, hot, then you SQUASH it, breaking the surface, revealing the layers.

Then you serve it up hot with a side of bowl of curry gravy for dippage and maybe a chicken thigh and give it to Dee who is now, like, your biggest fangirl, PrataMan!!!!1!1!!1#@!

breakfast

You don't know what those furry things are, do you? Look closer...


Yeah, I had to look rambutan up on wikipedia too. Rambutan in Malay means hairy. And they definitely look like something Harry would have. Except he'd only have two of them.

I thought they were lychees when I bought them (having only ever eaten naked lychees in a can of simple syrup.) When I saw them at the store I was, like, FSKJK@!!KW&#!!! OMFG LYCHEES!!!

Turns out, rambutan taste a little bit like lychees but not quite as good. I am looking for you, lychees. When I find you I will eat your entire lychee village!!

hello world!

We arrived in Singapore on Wednesday, July 1st-- which makes things tidy and easy to remember-- after one hop, Frankfurt, from Boston. It was somewhere around a 20 hour flight and BOY WERE OUR ARMS TIRED HAR.

Here, on the 11th, I think we've finally wrestled jetlag to the ground and can look around and reflect a bit on where we are. The brilliant, lyrical and deep posts--ones that shine like so many jewels upon the page-- are all by Dee. The rest are written in digital crayon by Al. And possibly Nemo, once he gets out of jail. You'll be able to tell the ones by Nemo because they'll largely be about Friskies and naps.