Things that you wouldn’t think you miss

dc and I travelled one hour to Ang Moh Kio to get him new spectacles with clip-on visors. You see, cydc have high astigmatism and myopia, so making eyewear is a big burn in the pocket for us. This particular shop at Ang Moh Kio has a friendly (and rather handsome) boss who charges affordable prices for poor grad students like us.

But I digress.

On the way back, we stopped by Ang Moh Kio hub for some kopi. The place was swarmed with people, considering this is a weekend and also the second day of the Great Singapore Sale. For a moment I was slightly hit by culture shock: people mountain people sea (人山人海 – the US is far less densely packed) people are dressed in polo shirts and khaki shorts (uncommon in Boston where it’s cold 9 months of the year), people of different races (just an observation, not being racist here), and the thing that hit me most, a lady telling her family, “Eh, the Glate SingaPORe Sale start al-lady leh'”. It’s both amusing yet heartwarming at the same time to hear something so familiar.

As we walked through the foodcourt, I walked past the 菜饭 stall with the colorful variety of food in big round tins stacked up neatly in three levels, the Korean BBQ stall with economical and sizzling hot plates, the soup stall with the traditional white china ‘urn’-thing with blue paintings in the steamer, the handmade noodle stall with the giant crispy ikan bilis.. I can’t wait to indulge in my Singapore food carnage! As much as dc is a great cook, and most cooking pastes and ingredients are now available in Boston, I think it is presumptuous to then assume that we can transplant the whole food culture to anywhere else in the world. Even the Malaysian cuisine restaurant Penang in the US doesn’t quite cut it yet.

So after being hit by the sights, sounds and smells, we settled on..

Traditional kopi brewed with butter-roasted coffee beans and laced with creamy condensed milk.

Silky white carrot cake fried with cai poh (preserved vegetables) and drenched with egg mixture, served with a handful of fresh chopped spring onions and a healthy dash of savory chilli sauce.

What a great start to our Singapore vacation. Can’t wait to see what the next three weeks will bring (and what weight I will gain from all the good food). :D