i haz a birthday

We iz at The Prime Society eatin' dey Australian cowz, nom nom nom.

Also, ice cream there quite good. And the fizzy wine from Austria, delish!

fried fish soup, delayed yum

Tonight's dinner at HV, a milk soup with rice noodle-- succulent fried, firm, white fish and "local spinach", Thai chili in fish sauce on the side to add-in, delish! Musical ambiance this evening = Miami Vice, an emo 80s mix tape.

This hawker center is not THE hawker center in HV, btw, but the one on the corner, across from the windmill. And ...whoever puts together the music for this center, is, like... A SISTER TO ME. Two weeks ago, the succulent carby-goodness of prata and dippage from the PrataMan combined with the Michael Jackson mix was, seriously, JUST what I needed to prevent slitting my wrists from homesickness. YOU SAVED MY LIFE, MIXTAPE LADY. I LOVE YOU, MAHN.

So here I am, tonight, contemplating my soup, which is far too hot to eat right away, sitting back in my chair, the big fans in the open air dining area oscillating gently, a cold mug of Tiger beer in my hand and the hubbub of contented voices all around me and I think to myself, 'This is me, Dee, watching an episode of Miami Vice in 1982 in metro Rocksonville, Floriduh. I am sitting in my mother's living room, and what's his face with the white linen suit is driving in his car, a warm night, just like here, with an 80s song blaring and the wind whipping thru his brush-back bangs. And in a moment of perfect clarity I look up, and see before me the timeline of my life laid out like a highway, punctuated with bright lights, a sensation of speed and the wind in my hair, just like the image on tv. I hurl down the road in the old Delta 88 I used to have, through this and thru that till I am looking down at a bowl of soup, cooling by degrees before me at an open cafe in Singapore. Slave to Love is playing. I watch a bead of condensation roll down my beer mug and pool on the table before I come back and start thinking mundane thoughts again, over in an instant, the spell created by the mixtape lady.

Here's the thing about this fish soup. 'Poo poo', said I, dipping a spoon in right when the gentlemn brought it out. It tastes raw and unsophisticated-- of milk and nothing else, where's its depth? But as I ate-- slowly, because of the heat, and waiting for the soup to cool-- the fried onions, the fried fish, the fish sauce and chilies (which I dumped in, of course!) slowly suffused throughout the soup, with the green vegetables. And slowly, as I chopsticked in the rice noodles, and ate the big chunks of fish, the soup transformed. From something hasty and simple, to somethign complex. Till after all the fish was gone, and the noodles eaten, it had become something sublime and savvory, something complex and wonderful. The soup at the end of the meal was entirely different from the soup at the beginning.

There's, like, some soup-y zen koan there or something, probably. YO I AM CLAPPING WITH ONE HAND CAUSE I'M EATING MY FISH SOUP WITH THE OTHER ONE WHAT SOUND AM I MAKING, GRASSHOPPER??!@!!

how the bubble tea lady in holland v almost killed me

Singapore is roughly 100 kilometers (about 65 miles) from the equator. FROM THE FREAKIN' EQUATOR. You forget that occasionally, or I do, it seems so incredible, like saying you live an hour's drive away from the north pole or maybe half a day's swim from the bottom of the ocean. But the sun will soon teach you to respect it, oh yes! here at the equator, where the surface of the earth bulges out like the spare tire on an aging geek, closest to the sun!! You say, oh, well, Starhub came to hook up the internet at noon and now they're gone and there's no food in the house, let's just walk down the street, 20 minutes, no problem, to HV for lunch. Forgetting that it's 12:20 at... The Equator. So your quick jaunt turns into a death march and by the time you get to HV you are actually on the verge of heatstroke...

AND the bubble tea lady, for whom you made a bee-line once you made it at last, knowing she had ICE, that magical substance that might-- possibly-- just save you from collapse, AND whom the Singaporean Toursim Board would have you believe speaks english, like all of the friendly nation here at the gateway to the east, does not actually speak english but Singlish, and finds your American accent completely incomprehensible besides...

in an effort to serve you well dutifully presents you with query after query trying to understand your order, blended/not blended, boba? jelly? juice? etc. (completely incomprehensible at the time) until you are literally swaying under the baking heat of the awning knowing that your face is beet red, your vision narrowing...

till you finally shove money over the counter, the amount you know not what, neglecting your change, taking the beverage from her hands as politely as possible considering your NEAR DEATH STATE and press the plastic freezie, I am not kidding, against the side of your neck where your carotid artery pumps blood to your brain that is several handfuls of degrees higher than it should be.

Two seconds from passing out you are saved. The bubble tea lady has a very poor opinion of you. But it's a small price to pay for your life.

I write 'I will show more respect to my environment' on the board one hundred million times.