A Bowl of Stupid

After 2 days in Singapore, although I'm settling in, I'm still not fully recovered from the trip here.

Maybe it was the 20 hour flight from Los Angeles. Maybe it's the fact that I went out until 5 a.m. and 3 a.m. the first two nights here, respectively. Maybe it was the 5 bottles of Chivas Regal I helped down each of those nights with one of my best friend's best friends (a.k.a., the guy who's letting me crash in his spare room; a.k.a., my new best friend) and the rest of his ex-pat buddies. Maybe it was the head cold I got from the girl hacking up a lung in the seat adjacent to me on my nightmare flight aboard American Airlines.

Regardless, I don't feel quite up to snuff. If I did, I would be going to Bangkok tomorrow with my buddy for the week. I may still go there later in the week, but as it now stands, I'm gonna stay here in Sing to relax and take in the city for a few days.

This morning, I went to a supermarket here on Robertson Quay (where I'm staying), where I was absolutely overwhelmed by the different and exotic foods, especially the fruits and vegetables.

The fruit that caught my eye the most was the above-pictured "dragon fruit" (or pitahaya).

Like I said above, I don't know what it is, what it tastes like, or who came up with the name — but it looks, and sounds like the most bad-ass fruit on earth. Seriously, they couldn't make up something this creepy looking on an episode of Star Trek.

This new food is the first step of many, I hope, which brings into sharp relief (for me, at least) the differences between the East and the West.

Don't get me wrong, I've seem some cool foods in the countries in Central and South America; but in the Americas, the same basic foods are eaten, available and similarly prepared as in the US — and most of the west (given that's where the Latino cultures originated). But here, they have dried/fried cuttlefish as a snack in the "outbox" of the local 7-11, right next to the Kit-Kats, Hershey Bars, and Trident (yes, they do chew gum here).

By the way, if you're interested, dried/fried cuttlefish snacks taste like something scraped from the bottom of a fishing-bait bucket. Hell, maybe it was.

But there are a number of other great foods that I've either never seen, or not had in a long while. I bought more food than I care to describe just to see what they taste like, at a pretty upscale market, and it still only cost me about US$40.00.

It was too much money in the grand scheme of things, but I'm starting to get a sense of pricing — with Singapore being the most expensive place in the area (with Robertson and Clark Quays themselves being among the most expensive areas in the city).

Tomorrow I plan to downsize. I'll be visiting one of the "hawker centers", which are big open-air markets where you can get, among other things, a huge bowl of rice noodles and chicken for about $3.00 Sing (about US$1.80).

As an aside, the other main difference that's caught my eye is that the sizes (meal portions, cars, scooters, … people) are remarkably smaller — even in a vastly metropolitan country such as Singapore. Indeed, I've yet to see an SUV or truck anywhere.

Don't get me wrong, this place is still pretty glutenous as far as cities go, but it's done in a much more simplified way. It's like an Eastern attempt at Westernization, much like (although in reverse) the Chinese food you get in the U.S. is a Westernized version of the original.

There's less water in the toilets, there are less cars on the road, and there's less food on the plates. They're just not needed.

I have, however, only been here for a couple days, and I could be completely wrong. But for now, it feels like a great first step for me to take in my ever-growing movement towards simplicity.

P.S. Dragon-fruit looks even cooler in real life than in that picture. Don't ask me why, cuz I couldn't tell ya.

P.P.S. In tribute to a friend I didn't get a chance to meet before I left the States, I'm watching one of my favorite movies today — Big Trouble In Little China (it just seems appropriate, doncha think?).

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