Greetings, In my expeditions about the city today, I happened upon your magazine. While I've only been in town for a couple of weeks, it's definitely refreshing to find a paper that is more attuned to my mindset than the Straits Times. This visit, my first, is nearing it's end, but I'll be back in a few weeks for about six months. I've been having a wonderful time exploring the food, music and culture of Singapore. As I'm always looking for ways to get other people to subsidize my playtime, I was wondering if you would be interested in a guest contributor. The extent of my professional writing career, so far, is a text book for the performance driving school that I teach at. However, a more appropriate sample of my writing are the journals that I've been writing about my trip. These are by no means intended for publication, other than being emailed to a few of my friends. They do however give an indication of my writing style, and are (mostly) about Singapore, and are included below. I hope that you enjoy them, Larry Colen lrc@netcom.com http://www.armory.com/~lrc By the way, Henry Ohm Farad is a geek pun on my initials: LRC. hofitcos01.txt 07/12/98 Henry O. Farad in the city of SIN My first overseas flight started out with my bags being labled SIN, in bold, all capital letters. I couldn't help but wonders, was this an omen? Perhaps an imperative? Twenty hours later I was about to find out that it wasn't much of either. I landed in Singapore primed and ready for an exotic tropical port, adventure in a third world asian country. The first thing that struck me was how strange Singapore isn't. First of all, English is the Singaporean Lingua Franca. I wouldn't be surprised to find that a higher percentage of the population of Singapore speaks English than of San Francisco. Sometimes the accents are a bit thick, but almost all of the signs are in English. Walk around a mall and it's easy to forget that you aren't in the Bay Area. Perhaps my favorite thing about Singapore is the food. I've barely managed to scratch the surface of the Culinary delights available. Singapore prides itself on being multi-racial and a trip to any of the hawker centers, or food courts, will bear this out. My first meal on the island was Laksah which I would describe as halfway between a red thai curry and pho. It's my favorite dish so far. The next night I was taken out to dinner at the Seafood Centre. I let my two native coworkers order for me. I must admit that I was a bit nervous when the waitress brought a glass cassarole filled with live prawns to the table. She then poured a glass of wine into the cassarole and shortly departed with the "drunken prawns". When I next saw them they were featured in a very tasty soup, called drunken prawns. The other noteworthy dish that night was chilli crab. This was undoubtably the best crab that I've ever tasted. I don't normally particularly care for crab. I don't dislike it, but it doesn't do anything special for me, but I did have seconds of the chilli crab. OK, and thirds too. For the most part, Singapore is not a place to go looking for incredible shopping bargains. Prices tend to be comparable to those in the United States. On the other hand, there are a few things that you can get here that you can't get in the US. On our way to dinner my first night here I was able to find a bookstore that had two Terry Pratchett disk world novels that aren't available yet as paperbacks in the US, and the camera store next door had, in stock, a lens that I had spent months looking for back home. My big shopping quest has been a bicycle. On our way to the hotel from the airport I saw a really cool bicycle. It had two top tubes, metal pull rods to activate the breaks and a chain guard that fully enclosed the chain. I spent a fair amount of energy Friday, Saturday and Sunday trying to find out how to buy one. Monday after work I found a bike shop that had one similar, brand new, for about Sing $110, or about US$70. Another thing that is better in Asia is the soda. The US has protectionist tarrifs on sugar to promote the commercial use of corn syrup. Corn, unlike sugar cane, being a major domestic crop. I'm tempted to ship about a dozen cases of Coke and Pepsi home. On Saturday I took the tram out to Sentosa Island, which turns out to have the southern most beach in Asia. It is yet another tacky tourist spot, with tacky tourists acting just like they do in every tourist trap that I've ever been in. And while the food was probably the worst that I've had on the Island, it was far, far better than any I've had from a fast food stall in any other tourist spot I've ever been in. Singapore has a reputation for being a "Fine city". A police state where you get charged exorbitant fines for minor offenses. On the other hand, when you consider the population density you understand the reason for these rules. Almost all of these rules are things that you would not want someone else to do, and if everyone did them the city would quickly be buried in garbage and effluvia. As it is, despite the astronomical population density, it is the cleanest city that I've ever seen. Cars are very expensive in Singapore, about three or four times what the same car would cost in the U.S. On the other hand, there is barely room for the people on the island, if there were the same ratio of cars to people as in California, there wouldn't be room to park all of the cars, much less drive them. There is one aspect of Singapore traffic that I find rather disconcerting. Lane markings are considered to be loose suggestions, very loose. Cars are as likely to straddle the lane markings as drive between them. While performance oriented drivers in the US may play with lane changes to optimize their line through a turn, drivers in Singapore seem to change lanes at random through turns. It is almost surprising that the majority of car doors are actually convex rather than concave. There is one thing that you can't get in Singapore that you'd expect that you can, and that is a decent foldout map. The map that everyone uses is a book published by the government. At a scale of 1:7500 the individual pages show so little that you practically have to turn pages to map a trip across the street. An ex-pat friend of mine says that this is part of a social engineering project by the government to keep people from realizing how small the island is. He also pointed out that the roads are laid out so that it is not too easy to go long distances, also to make the island seem larger. I've noticed that the locals balk at walks of as little as a kilometer. I'm now five days into this trip to Singapore and still very much in the "Wow! I'm 10,000 miles from home, isn't this cool!" stage. This trip continues to reaffirm my belief that cultures differ, but people are the same. hofitcos2.txt 16 dec 98 It's been a week and a half since I've had a chance to write-lah. I've been keeping busy. Most days I'm at the office from about 9AM till around 8PM. About a week ago I got word that a friend of mine had a fatal heart attack. Terry was about the last person that I would have expected to have a heart attack. At 60, he danced several nights a week, and vigorous styles like Irish and Morris at that. It was a painful and powerful reminder to live every day of your life as fully as possible, because you never know when your time will be up. I have been doing my best to enjoy my trip as much as possible, keeping in mind that I am, in fact, here on business rather than holiday. I continue to be enthralled with the food here. I have noticed that there seems to be almost no correlation between the quality of the food and the cost. The food from sit down restaurants costs two to ten times that of the street vendors (hawkers) and is rarely much, if any better. Sunday night, we went to a multi-story food court on "the golden mile", which is the thai neighborhood. I do not have the literary skill to describe the Tom Yam (seafood soup). It will have to suffice to say that I had a smile on my face long after the meal was over. It was mildly spicy, and the flavor was wonderfully complex. I was surprised to see Pineapple rice there, served in the Pineapple. I ordered that in honor of Geoff, who recently ranted that despite being a mediocre dish everyone feels compelled to order it. The difference between this and pineapple rice in the states is akin to the difference between a good Bordeaux red and a Gallo Rose'. The ingredients, and the production are nominally similar in both cases, but on the palate the end product bear only the most superficial resembalence. The third dish that evening was a "BBQ chicken salad". Pieces of chicken in a vinegery sauce, with a few vegetables and a leaf or two of lettuce. Quite pleasant, but unlike the other two dishes not, of itself, worth a letter home. This meal, was rather expensive by food court standards, being S$30 for two people. Sunday was one of my more expensive days on the Island. I started out by buying my nephew a really cool toy for his holiday present. On my way to Joo Chiat road to buy myself a bicycle, we checked out a shop selling bootleg software. I will say in my defense that none of this is software that I would own if I had to pay "real" prices for it. It is a Chinese made single speed bike, in the style of the classic British bikes, like the blue bike with baskets that I would bring to the race track. Rather than cables, the brakes are actuated by means of metal rods. It has double top tubes and I bought some bolt on fork braces for it. The kickstand is actually a sturdy metal triangle which hold the bike upright and stable. It cost me S$130 which works out to about US$70. It is not, by the way, a light bike. I doubt that I'll be riding it from Felton to San Jose, but it should do just fine on some of the easy group rides that a friend of mine organizes monthly. Later in the day, we went to Clarke Quay which is kind of a touristy area with restaurants, bars and shops. One of the shops there has very good prices on silk. I decided that the most expedient way to do my holiday shopping was to buy a whole bunch of silk scarves and ties and figure out what I'll give to who when I get back to the states. Clarke Quay is also the site of a bar called "The Crazy Elephant" which has excellent live rock and blues music. The clientelle seems to be almost entirely middleaged caucasians. Speaking of bars, drinking in Singapore is rather expensive. A bottle of Guinnes costs about S$10 (US$6), as did a shot of Glen Fiddich at the Crazy Elephant. The "happening place" for clubs, used to be just down river of Clarke Quay at Boat Quay. We went there for dinner last Friday night. There are a lot of clubs there, as well as a large selection of touristy restaurants. We had Balinese food out by the water. We had an assortment of a dozen satay skewere. Four each of mutton, beef and chicken. We also had a pleasantly spicy curry. This meal was quite good, but at $50 for the two of us it was nowhere near as good of a deal as the far superior thai meal we had the following night. According to Sunday's paper the "in" place is now Mohamed Sultan Road. This neigborhood is noteworthy because it happened without any financial, or zoning backing from the government. One entrepeneur, Sam Wong if I remember correctly, opened a bar in a funky industrial space, and as it became popular other clubs followed. I managed a reconaisance trip there tonight and the bars were populated mostly by kids in their early to mid twenties, dressed mostly in black. It is supposed to be the place to go dancing on the weekend, but no one was dancing in any of the bars tonight (Tuesday). Unlike the clubs on Boat and Clarke Quays, which seem to play mostly disco, pop and rap, these clubs seemed to play more 80's and alternative music. To my dismay, swing does not seem to have been discovered here at all yet. Karaoke, and KTV seem to be extremely popular here. I'd say over half the bars boast karaoke, or ktv. More "traditional" styles of fast food can be found. One chain of note is Komala's, which is vegetarian, Indian fast food. For lunch on Sunday we had burgers at Mos, which I've since learned is a Japanese chain. These burgers were truly dreadful. Curiousity got the better of me tonight and I had a mushroom swiss burger at the Burger King across the street from the hotel. To my surprise it might have actually been a bit better than food from Burger Kings in the US. One difference of note is that in addition to ketchup they also serve a chilli sauce, which is similar to ketchup but a little spicier and more vinegary. One nice thing about Singapore is that, for the first time in my life, I am actually taller than most people. Whereas in the States most guys are between 5'8 and 5'11", I'd say that here most are betwen 5'3" and 5'6". People here also tend to be quite slender. Not only do they not have much fat, but they don't seem to have much muscle mass either. Of course, the whether here is not at all conducive to outdoor sports, or outdoor activity of any kind. The locals seem disinclined to walk more than a couple hundred meters, if they can avoid it. On the flip side, almost all buildings, taxis and buses are airconditioned. The transition between inside and outside, in either direction, can be quite shocking. Going from a cool airconned to the hot muggy outside frequently causes my glasses to fog up for a few seconds. Another side effect of being within spitting distance of the equator is that people can't give you a swirly. When you flush the toilet, the water neither swirls clockwise or counterclockwise. I was finally able to find some fold out maps of the Island, but have been thwarted in my attempt to find a busroute book. New ones get printed every year and by mid December, every store is sold out. I have not yet figured out how I am going to ship soda and other goodies home. I've been kept a bit too busy at work to have a chance to figure this out. One cool geek achievment is that notebook computer that I have for work now will boot Windows 98, RedHat 5.1 Linux and the Linux Installation that we ship on the Internet Appliance boxes. One thing that is very striking about Singaporean culture is the extreme level of commercialism and brand-consciousness of people here. Reading the paper and seeing ads, one also quickly realizes that people are even more uptight about body weight than in the States. Likewise, the culture has very conservative attitudes towards sex. Yet prostitution is legal. I bought a book on the local sex trade titled "No Money, No Honey", which starts with an analysis of the local attitudes, and quotes several surveys on the subject. I continue to notice how most of the drivers live up to the stereotypes of Oriental drivers. Everytime I take a ride in a taxi, I get to my destination mildly surprised that we did not have an accident en route. Granted, 7 years of teaching driving has probably made me a little over sensitive to bad driving habits, but I think that event the most casual american passenger would note the cavelier attitude towards lane selection of almost every Singaporean driver. I'm still not certain when I'll be going home. Our admin was able to confirm a flight for me on the 24th, but I'm still on standby for the 19th and the 20th. I mentioned that I would be interested in coming back to Singapore for a period of several months, and it looks very likely that such a deal will come through. I don't know when, or for how long, but I am looking forward to the opportunity to spend enough time here to explore a bit more of Southeast Asia. hoficos03.txt 17Dec98 This trip has been an interesting voyage of exploration. Not just of a new land, and it's foods, but of myself. Sometimes all at the same time. Many of the things that I've eaten are things that I wouldn't go out of my way to eat, some of them have indeed been things that I might even go a little out of my way not to eat. I haven't always had the courage to order everything that I might, but when my dinner companions order something my intent has always been to try it, and then, maybe, ask what it is afterwards. Tonight I discovered one of my limits. We were at a restaurant in Little India called Muthus Curry. One of Singapore's most popular dishes is fishhead curry. It was quite good, really, but when I was offered an eyeball I just didn't muster up the gumption to try it. We also had black squid, which was OK but not spectacular. The chicken Masalan (sp?) was quite good. The chicken and a couple of the side dishes served onto the banana leaf were about two notches spicier than what I have had in Indian restaurants in the states. Like many of the restaurants in Singapore, the food was served on a banana leaf. silverware was available, though Indians don't usually use it. In such a multicultural environment the people seem to have a very casual approach to what eating utensils that they use. As often as not, especially at a food court, a table will have american silverware, chopsticks and oriental ceramic spoons. My chinese coworkers often chastise me for using chopsticks, even when they wouldn't. One thing that peeves me about Singapore is that napkins are only supplied in more expesive restaurants and bathrooms rarely have paper towels, but instead have those godforsaken blowers. That don't dry your hands worth diddly. You can't wipe your hands at the table, and can't dry them off when you wash up in the bathroom afterwards. You have probably noticed that a lot of this travelogue is about the food in Singapore. You might come to the conclusion that there isn't anything to do here but eat. You would nearly be right, but there is also shopping. It's been rather warm and muggy, and also overcast. While I was out at lunch today, the sun came out briefly and it quickly became downright hot. I quickly gained appreciation of the local aversion to outdoor activities, during the day anyways. I'm sure that a lot of the apparent lack of anything to do, comes from my not being part of the local social network. Back home, there is a large degree of overlap between many social groups, so that once you become involved in one, you can quickly find out about others. Today, I decided to try using the net and asked about swing dancing locally. If I'm lucky the lead about there being classes at the local "Y" will pan out. It has been confirmed that I will be coming back here for six months. Probably in the middle of January. While I am very excited over the opportunity to have enough time to more fully explore South East Asia, I must confess to occasional pangs of anxiety. While I expect that I will be making a few trips home during my stay the realization that I'll be spending most of the next half year, halfway around the world from my home, family and friends can be a little scary. I've also been learning a lot about Linux. While I've been using it at home for over four years, and Xenix for about four before that, I never really got very deep into the system. Most of the CPU cycles on my home computers were spent on things like email, netnews and the web. After spending all day at work programming, and then trying to have some sort of a social life, I didn't really have a lot of my own CPU cycles to play with, as opposed to on, my own computers. I've spent the past two weeks feeling like I'm constantly growing. And while this is a good, and an exciting thing, it isn't always comfortable. I'm frequently coming up against barriers, often cultural conditioning, or habits, and literally having to force myself to do take the opportunities that come my way. In some ways, I regret that it took me until I was nearly middle aged to embark on such an adventure, but I'm very glad that when the opportunity came about, I took it. hofitcos04.txt 19/12/98 The good news is that I finally tracked down swing dancing in Singapore. There are classes at the "Y", though they are on break for a few weeks. There is also swing dancing at a bar called Gatsby's, on Monday nights. I'll do my best to get there Monday. The other bit of good news is that I was able to get a flight home on Tuesday, so I'll have time to prepare for my traditional Dec. 25th Scotch tasting. Last night Greg (the CEO of I-A) took me out to dinner with a couple of the other employees. We ate at a food court, I don't remember exactly which one. The main course was pepper crab, which is different from the chilli crab that I had two weeks previously. It was quite good. I'd say the sauce might have been better than the chilli crab, but the crab wasn't quite a good. I did manage to get a small, yet annoying cut on my thumb. In a feeble attempt at discretion, I'll only make a vague reference to pricking my thumb at the table. By the time that we got back to the hotel, it was pretty late. Sometime after ten. I was trying to work up the energy to go out. It was mostly on principle, it being my last weekend here. Suppakorn, my roommate, opened a bottle of red wine and I got sucked into watching "When Harry met Sally" on the TV. I was dismayed that they cut most of the scene where she fakes an orgasm in the diner. I guess that the Malay's are as uptight as the Singaporeans. I seem to be coming out from under this cold that I'm fighting. I still have a stuffy nose, but it's not as bad as it was yesterday. There have been several times during the day when I could actually breath through my nose. The buffet breakfast at the hotel is not bad. But it's not really great either. It's kind of a hodgepodge of American and Asian breakfast foods, prepared by someone who I suspect doesn't understand either. The fresh fruit is usually quite good though. When I start living in an apartment, rather than a hotel here, I'm going to have to learn a lot more about the produce available here. After breakfast I picked up my laundry, then headed over to the office to check on my email. One of my net.dance contacts here was in a show tonight where they were dancing swing. I hadn't received details on when and where and email was the only contact I had for her. As it turns out, she hadn't sent me mail and did eventually leave a message at my hotel room. After the office, I went down to the Eunos MRT, there being MRT stations near several of my potential destinations. It turned out that there was a food court next to the MRT station, and I bought lunch at a Malay stall and ended up having a long discussion with Effendi, the owner. I didn't know what any of the dishes were, but the ingredients looked good so I just told his wife to make me something good and tell me how much it cost. She made me Mee Goreng, which translates to Fried noodles. Substitute noodles for rice in fried rice, using seafood rather than pork, and use seasonings similar to those in Laksah and you'd be close. Of course if you know what Laksah tastes like you also probably know what Malaysian Mee Goreng tastes like. I guess this is like telling a blind man that purple is like a combination of red and blue. If it's any help, the seasonings are not entirely unlike those in a red thai curry. Anyways, it was fairly spicy, and quite tasty. We ended up talking for quite a while. I learned that if I'm ever in Paris, the Asian food in district 13 is very good. That, like Esperanto, the Malay language shared by all of the different groups was a fabricated language that does not "belong" to any one region. Unlike Esperanto it is 500 years old and there are a lot of people who speak it. Also, the syntactic structure of this language, and I've already forgotten the name, is very similar to English. The differences between Nonya and Malaysian cooking are subtle and mostly involve the use of pork. We discussed the way the current recession is affecting peoples lifestyles. I went back to Mohamed Sultan Road tonight. I started out with dinner at Wong San's Eastside Sushi bar. I'm sure that part of the problem is that I still have the lingering tail end of a stuffy nose, which kind of makes one miss out on a lot of the subtleties, but I was quite underwhelmed by the sushi. It was a lot closer in style to the nigiri that I've gotten in Korean restaurants, with very thinly sliced fish. I had three orders, six pieces, of nigiri: Salmon, Unagi and something else. I ordered Hamachi, but they were out and the chef suggested something else. I didn't catch what it was. I had a bottle of E-33 cider with the sushi. It was an Auzzie cider, again with the stuffy nose I missed out on any subtleties that might have been there. I was still peckish, went searching for more food, and ended up a couple doors down at a place called Redneck's on the corner of River Valley and Mohamed Sultan. I had the Louisiana ribs. They were quite good, and resonably spicy. The cornbread was tasty. The potato salad was fine, but unlike any potato salad that I've ever had. I started pubbing at (I think it was called) Club Satay. They were playing decent alternativeish rock, rather than the disco at most of the other clubs that were populated by the young crowd. It was interesting to note that all the staff I saw working there were very cute girls in their early twenties. I had my minimum two drinks, watched the crowds and some extreme sport videos on the tube and went looking for someplace where there was dancing. I ended up at Madame Wong's. There was a pretty long queue to get in, and it was only about 9:30 or 10:00. As I suspected, waiting on line was a better chance to meet and talk with people than in a noisy bar. I chatted a bit while we were waiting with four college guys. Three of them from NUS, one is going to school in Vancouver BC. When it started to rain, all of a sudden the queue started moving a lot faster, like an order of magnitude faster. This made me suspiscious that they deliberately restrict the inflow, to make the bar seem more desireable. I doubt that it is at all necessary, Madame Wong's definitely seems to be THE hot spot at the moment. The place was absolutely packed, and people were actually dancing. Or doing the best approximation that they could. Most of the dancers were actually standing on benches on the sides of the room, at the back, near the DJ. I honestly can't really compare the club scene with the states, because I rarely go to clubs or discos. When I do, it's usually to see a band, or to go dancing, usually swing. I will say that the crowd at these bars seems remarkably tame. Only a few people sported any visible body art, and most of that was fairly tame, at least by Bay Area standards. Most of the music seems to be disco rather than so called alternative. For the moment, I will defer my rant about what happens to alternative music when it becomes mainstream. If there is a club in town that plays alternative, house, goth or industrial I haven't found it. From what I've seen so far, I'd almost be more surprised to find one than to find out that there aren't any. The local entertainment paper does mention at least one club which plays house. Even so, as far as pop culture goes, I'm getting the strong suspiscion that Singapore is on the trailing edge. Just like home alert. The supplement to I-S, the local entertainment paper has both "Life in Hell", and Rob Brezsny. After spending some time dancing, and watching in Madame Wong's I wandered back to Club Satay. Things had picked up in there and the scene was a lot closer to that of M. Wong's than when I had left. I hung out for a song or two, but had grown tired of dancing by myself. A loud bar, where I don't know anyone, and there isn't room to really dance, is the sort of venue where all of my shyness works against me and I have a hard time meeting people. I walked down to Clarke Quay and returned to the Crazy Elephant. The same Blues Trio as last week was playing and they are truly awesome. If these guys ever put out a CD, I'm buying one. As an automotive enthusiast, I am really beginning to appreciate how isolated we are in America. Under the guise of safety and pollution regulations, the American market is "protected" from an incredible diversity of cars. Most of these are small, inexpensive cars ideally suited for urban environments. Some are from companies that don't even have a presence in the States, such as Seat, and others are models that simply aren't offered. When I returned to Club Satay tonight, a woman drove up in an extremely cute Honda 2-seat convertible. I believe it was mid engined and I suspect that the motor was about 1 litre in displacement. It seemed like the modern equivalent of a Frogeye Sprite. It seemed incredibly easy to park, and I doubt that it was much longer than many SUVs are wide. I also saw a Citroen today. I was moderately disappointed in that the styling was darn near pedestrian. Every Citroen I've seen until now made a statement. Usually that statement was "I was designed by a Frenchman who does not care how ugly other people consider his work". But, at least they said something, unlike the bland indistinguishable masses of sanitized, designed by committee jellybean cars on the road today. If I hadn't noticed the chevron emblem on it, I would have never suspected that it was French, much less a Citroen. Another thing I've noticed about Singapore traffic, and I've even heard this discussed on the radio, is the way that people completely ignore an ambulance caught in traffic behind them. An ambulance could be stuck in traffic, with lights and siren going full tilt boogie, and people don't even make an attempt to pull over and let it past. Plumbing is different here. First of all, there are almost no water fountains around. I think that there might be some in East Coast park, and possibly on Sentosa, but they are very rare. I'd expect to find them in MRT stations, Malls, office buildings, etc. But they just don't seem to be around. One place that I haven't worked very hard to explore beyond my own cultural bias is the bathroom. With a large portion of the population Indian and/or Muslim most of the bathrooms have stalls that rather than having toilets have what is basically a hole in the floor. In theory this is no problem. In practice, it just gives guys one more opportunity to exhibit what poor aim that they have.