Red in the face
Posted by: starqueen79 on: May 23, 2010
Today is my one year anniversary of living in Singapore. A tropical island state just a stone’s throw from the equator.
The average daily temperature is 32 degrees, and humidity ranges somewhere between 80-100%. It’s hot every day, often unbearably so. As a result most Singaporean’s go to great lengths to avoid the sun’s evil rays, carrying parasols, walking on the shaded side of the street and using underground walkways wherever possible when they have to brave the great outdoors. I join them in such sun-dodging steps when out and about, but I’ve always enjoyed the odd hour or two soaking up some rays by the pool when I get the chance.
Having been here for a year, you’d think I would have gotten to grips with the heat and the blazing sun. But no. After a few days of rain, I woke up today to see the sun was gleaming in the sky and decided I was long overdue some pool time (the last two month of working life have had serious repurcussions on my previously bronzed skin). Feeling a bit pasty I donned my skimpiest of bikinis and headed down to the pool with my book. There was a wonderfully rare cool breeze blowing through the palm trees making it feel cooler than normal and I carelessly didn’t slather on the sun lotion as soon as I sat down. I’ll half blame my book which was completely engrossing and I never got to that point where I was willing to put it down and reach for the ambre solaire. When I did, it was evidently too late. Several lazy hours later I headed back to my condo to jump in the shower and was shocked at the red and white stripy mess facing me in the bathroom mirror. My face was a beetroot red shade with terrible white panda eyes courtsey of my new sunnies. Despite lashings of aftersun, the redness has continued to brighten in hue and I am veritably glowing in the dark.
I now need to rifle through my wardrobe and find something body-covering yet cool to wear to work tomorrow. God knows how I’ll be able to sort my lobster-like face out. I’m literally going to have to use my concealer as foundation!
Let’s hope it’s a lesson learned and I don’t get too much ribbing at the office tomorrow!
Lost in translation
Posted by: starqueen79 on: April 30, 2010
Living in Asia, it’s only to be expected that I’ll come across some signs and shop names that are “lost in translation”, but bearing in mind that Singapore is an English speaking nation, you’d expect such gaffes to be few and far between.
Granted, I often come across minor grammatical errors and badly phrased copy, but I have sat in many an eaterie in London where the spelling and wording has been worse! They do seem to be fond of speaking in the third person passive here which I find completely random. It always grates on my nerves when I see the sign in my local supermarket apologising for a till being shut or a card machine being out of order that reads: “The inconvenience caused is regretted”.
But the laughs have to come from the unfortunately named shops I have come across. It would be rude not to share these with you, plus I’d like to know if these are as amusing to others as they are to me. Or perhaps I just have a strange and warped mind! You decide:
Wanko – ladies clothing shop. Never bought anything in here because the clothes are …!
Fook Hing trading co – a very posh pen shop
Fourskin -men’s clothing store – (Well, it only could be men’s fashion !)
Poh Heng – fine jewellers. Wouldn’t you love a romantic surprise from here?
Wee Wee – another badly named ladies fashion store (not my photo by the way but very funny!)
There’s also a riverside restaurant called the Fu Qing Marina Bay, but I haven’t been past it with my camera handy lately!
They’ve all made me chuckle over the past few months anyway – hope they at least brought a smile to your face. I’ll keep my eyes scanned for more funny photo opps on my wanderings!
The tropical work wardrobe
Posted by: starqueen79 on: April 28, 2010
I’ve just recently started a new job working in the financial services sector in Singapore and one of my biggest challenges so far has been working out an appropriate work wardrobe. Here are my chief dilemnas:
1 ) How to dress for the tropical climate, staying cool but still looking professional
2) How not to dress inappropriately (i.e. showing too much flesh!)
3) How to prevent permanent goosebumps / hyperthermia in the air-conditioned office
My answer to all of the above three is the timeless shift dress, preferably in a light cotton material. You can wear it on the journey to work without building up too much of a sweat. It looks smart and professional. To assuage the icy blast of the air con, you can throw a cardy or jacket over the top, thus avoiding goosebumps and any concerns of flesh overload. Stick some blinging beads on at 6pm and voila you’re all set for a night out!
My walk to work is relatively short – a mere 12 minutes door to door. But even at 8:30am the sun can be scorching and the temperatures tipping 30 degrees. Therefore it’s a necessity to wear something loose and light that won’t divulge sweat patches – not a lot I can do about the “glow” on my upper lip that’s formed by the time I reach the office lobby though! Most Singaporeans wouldn’t put up with so much time out in broad daylight always preferring to take a cab, hop on the MRT or even the bus rather than walk anywhere.
What always gets me is the artificial environment I’m forced to sit in for 9 hours a day. At lunch, I insist on walking around outside for a while just to warm up. It takes the full hour of my lunch break to even start to get hot or sweaty because I’m so numb from the chilly aircon. Some days I even go and sit by the pool at my condo or on our roof garden. The constant switch from 18 degrees to 30+ degrees must play havoc with your skin. amd I’m surprised mine hasn’t flipped out yet.
But despite the challenges of dressing for both the weather and the office I wouldn’t have it any other way. No matter how hard or gruelling your day, I defy anyone to not feel elated and chilled out by a short walk home on a balmy evening, with a pool and jacuzzi waiting to soothe away your troubles!
Scariest sunday roast ever
Posted by: starqueen79 on: April 25, 2010
Woo hoo, it’s Sunday. A day for relaxing, watching rubbish on the telly and tucking into a tasty roast dinner.
Lazy morning lie in – check
American idol reruns – check
The day was all going to plan until I unwrapped the store-bought chicken from it’s packaging and nearly died when it’s flimsy neck and beaked head flopped onto the kitchen counter. To confirm my worst fears I carefully spun it round to see gnarly chicken feet at the other end. It’s fair to say I had a little freaking out episode at this point which was much more controlled and repressed than it might otherwise have been had A not been on Skype to his parents at the time.
Now, I have trouble chopping up normal chicken breasts because I don’t like all the “ming”, so dealing with a full on scraggy looking chicken head was not going to happen. Luckily, A stepped in as my hero (nothing gets in the way of a man and his meat) and chopped his head and feet off for me and I whacked the thing in the oven asap so I didn’t have to look any longer at it’s woeful beheadedness.
I’d been really looking forward to my dinner, but the thought of a juicy, crisp skinned chicken was marred by the traumatic images of it’s evil looking head! Still, when it came out the oven 90 minutes later I had miraculously forgotten all about the aforementioned trauma and tucked in merrily to a delicious bird replete with roasties and veg!
Here in Sinagpore they love serving animals in their entirety. Or if not served whole, they’ll find a way to eat every bit. Pig’s organ soup, fish head curry, chicken feet and pig cheek are all regular dishes on local menus. You won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve shyed away from trying any of them so far. The next time I buy a chicken, I’ll try not to do it bleary eyed from sleep early on a Sunday morning but will go to great pains to ensure I’ve bought a pre-prepared wussy westerner version!
What does Delia know?
Posted by: starqueen79 on: April 18, 2010
I’m in a bad mood, and it’s all Delia’s fault. She may be a kitchen legend and writer of numerous best-selling cook books, but she let me down today.
On Sunday morning’s A and I like to take it easy and often cook up a tasty lazy brunch around midday. Usually this means scrambled eggs on toast, or maybe some bacon butties. Inspired by the yummy breakfasts at the hotel on our recent trip to HK, I decided I would try my hand at making eggs benedict. Posh, hey?
Now, I can’t tag Delia with 100% of the blame, as I made a few errors off my own back, but she really shouldn’t say cooking with eggs is easy when it’s so clearly not!
Mistake No. 1: I misread the ingredients for the hollandaise sauce and put in whole eggs instead of just the yolks. My bad. Delia can’t be blamed here.
Mistake No.2: Not just giving up there and then but deciding to start from scratch and make a new sauce. Delia says it’s simple so …
Mistake No.3: Believing Delia when she says it’s simple
So, on sauce attempt number two I decided I may as well give Delia’s recommendation of the “special” foaming hollandaise sauce a try. I followed the instructions step by step and although the end result tasted pretty good, it was a rather strange consistency and didn’t ooze gracefully over the bacon topped ciabatta as I’d hoped. But the real issue came with the eggs…
Eggs Benedict requires poached eggs, which I’ve never made before. But Delia said all you needed to do was break the eggs quickly into a simmering pan for exactly one minute (I timed it judiciously) then leave them in the pan with the heat off for another ten – voila perfect poached eggs.
Not so. The egg white just seemed to dissolve into a watery mush when I fished it out leaving just a sad and lonely yellow yolk, which annoyingly just slid straight off the ciabatta into a mushy pile, quite destroying the elegant concotion I had hoped to serve up.
So, my attempt was far from perfect. A ate his all up, but I had lost the will to enjoy it by this point. The most frustrating thing of all was that this whole process took up two valuable hours of my precious Sunday that I’ll never get back.
Next week we’re going out for brunch or at least sticking to scrambled eggs, which I have to say I am a veritable master of. Never listen to people who say live a little and try new things – just stick to what you know, it’ll save a whole lot of grief! :-0
Door etiquette
Posted by: starqueen79 on: March 20, 2010
I can only speak on behalf of Brits, but when it comes to doors, we have a certain unwritten etiquette that we’re all brought up to follow. Namely, we hold the door open for those behind us, and would always go to fairly great lengths to prevent a door from swinging shut on anyone behind us. A lot of men will still even hold the door open for a lady.
A sight you'll never see...
Not so at all in Singapore. For a nation that has been heavily influenced by British customs and culture – these guys know how to queue better than we do – it’s shocking that any notion of door etiquette is completely non-existent in the Lion City.
Any Singaporean will happily swing a double door open with a push to walk through it, but they will pay no heed whatsoever to anyone who might happen to be close enough behind them to catch the door on it’s return swing, which often results in the unaware being caught in the face. If you ever deigned to wait and hold a door open for someone, they would just look at you oddly as they passed through bemusedly – no thank you will pass their lips.
Today I was approaching the double doors to a building entrance, to the point where I was in grabbing distance of the door handle. There were a gaggle of female office workers headed in the opposite direction walking 5-a-breast and taking up the whole width of the door frame. Despite the fact it was a floor to ceiling glass door, the girls paid no heed to my presence and carelessly pushed both sets of doors wide open, forcing me to step back and tread on the foot of the poor gentleman behind me. So polite.
And when it comes to taking the lift, Singaporeans have an annoyingly rude habit of pressing the “door close” button as soon as they enter a lift, regardless of the fact there might be a horde of people waiting to board it with them. This rush to get somewhere particularly bothers me seeing as it is displayed nowhere else in daily life. The Singaporeans walk at a pace that would frustrate a tortoise. I know it’s hot here and no-one likes to get sweaty unduly, but honestly, it’s actually physically painful for me to walk at such a sluggish rate.
But back to those pesky doors… A plea to the population of Singapore: please take two second out of your precious day to turn around and check who might be behind you each time you walk through a door!
Sit or squat?
Posted by: starqueen79 on: March 19, 2010
Those are the two choices ladies are faced with in the majority of public conveniences in Singapore. Handily, most cubicle doors will have a sign on the front indicating which is which so you can make the right choice of how spend your penny, so to speak.
How do you do yours?
Anyone who’s ever spent any time in Asia will have undoubtedly come across the squat toilet phenomenon on their travels. Some are more hygenic than others and nowhere in Asia will you find more pristine facilities than Singapore. Regardless of where you are, the majority of WCs will be all-singing-all-dancing with automatic flushes, taps, soap, handtowel etc. All very hi-tech and sanitary.
I like to think I’m a fairly open-minded person, to each his own and all that, so it was with no real surprise that I encountered my first squat toilet in a shopping mall during my first few days in Singapore. What did surprise me though was the warning sign on the back of every toilet door about standing on normal toilets seats in order to “squat”. I even came across a very vivid pair of shoe-sole footprints on one loo seat. My initial reaction was disgust at it having sullied the seat for those of us who like to take the weight off whilst we pee. My swift to follow second reaction was bewilderment. Said toilet seat was a good 70cm+ off the floor and the balancing act that must have gone into such a feat beggared belief. I can only imagine the offender had to use both hands against the side of the cubicle to support herself. Surely this can’t be a comfortable way of spending a penny?
But there you have it. We may all be the same when it comes down to it, but how we do “it” can differ greatly!
Singlish can?
Posted by: starqueen79 on: March 19, 2010
Almost ten months in, and I’m surprised it has taken me this long to get around to blogging about the weird and wonderful creole language of “Singlish” spoken by a staggering 71% of the population here in Singapore.
It’s basically English with a wonderful mish mash of various Chinese and Malay dialects and words. To my ear, it is quite sing-songy and tonally it sounds very much like Chinese. Where it differs from standard English greatly is how words are emphasised or de-accented. You have to train your native speaker ear to understand a lot of the vocab, phrases and the tonality of speech, which starts to come easily after a bit of exposure. Although sometimes I feel like I am having a conversation in two completely different langauges – my aircon guy in particular is so very hard to understand! What I find fascinating is my subconcious reaction to want to speak back in Singlish in shops. I’ve started speaking my own form of pidgin Singlish, which is a tad worrying, although to be fair, it seems to work better for communication purposes!
The government would certainly be unhappy about that. There is a massive campaign here to eradicate Singlish, with the recent launch of the “Speak Good English Movement”, which seems a slight misnomer in itself! The you-tube infamous ex-Miss Singapore 2009, Ris Low, even lost her crown because of her poor grasp of “proper” English which sparked huge debate throughout the nation on the various merits and demerits of this local patois. Yesterday I read an article in Time magzine about a Singaporean film that was given an 18 rating by the government, not because of bad language, violence or sex but due to the amount of singlish spoken! They even banned all the film’s trailers and advertising in an effort to crack down and stamp out Singlish. The government’s perception is that Singlish is bad for business, making locals look stupid in the world of international commerce. It really is a source of great contention and ardent debate that you’ll come across daily in the papers here.
But from my point of view, I think Singlish is quite good fun and it’s so embedded in the local culture it seems impossible it will ever fully disapper. So I thought I’d share a quick lesson in how to sound like a local!
Here’s some useful vocab to get you started:
Lah – No idea what it means, but just put it at the end of each sentence to sound truly like a local:
“You wanna see film tonight or wat lah? “ (Do you fancy going to see a film tonight or something?) ” Ok lah” (It’s alright. Don’t worry about it)
Can – used prolifically to signify any form of agreement, a particular substitute for the word yes. Say it twice for emphasis:
“Mastercard can?” > “Can can” (Do you take Mastercard? > Yes we do) “Cannot” (Sorry, that’s not possible/available)
Aunty / Uncle – How to politely refer to your elders:
“You wan me help with that Aunty/Uncle?” (Do you need any help person who is older and therefore to be respected?)
Ang moh - literally translated as “red hair”, but is the local way of referring to all white people. It’s slightly pejorative, but don’t take offense if you’re called it, people even use it to refer to anything western such as films or food.
“She got ang moh boyfriend you know!” (She’s going out with a westerner) “You wan ang moh food tonight?” (Shall we go out for western food tonight?)Chope – the art of reserving a table with a packet of tissues, particularly in hawker centres / food courts
“Where we sit now? Someone chope that table already lah” (Where shall we go and sit, someone’s sat at the table I had my eye on)
Shiok - Super, great, fantastic. Used to describe great pleasure with something, especially food.
“That nasi goreng was shiok!” (That indian rice dish was delicious)
I could go on as the list really is endless. I was reading a funny article about how to order MacDonald’s like a local so that the “auntie” working behind the counter will understand you. It struck a chord because I have had some real trouble trying to request a happy meal before…. So here is the quick and easy guide to the Maccas menu in Singlish:
McDonalds = meh-donners
Happy meal = hair-pee-mew
French Fries = Flench-fly
Apple Pie = Apper-pai
So there’s my “rough guide” to Singlish, but if you want a real understanding scholars have written indepth articles and countless books on this fascinating subject. However, I think the best site of all is www.talkingcock.com.sg - which has some highly humorous articles on Singlish and living in singapore, as well as an online coxford singlish dictionary! (FYI “talking cock” is a singaporean phrase for speaking nonsense!)
A wee miscommunication
Posted by: starqueen79 on: March 16, 2010
Today I went for a pre-employment medical for my new job. It was a slightly bizarre experience, almost like being on a medical testing conveyor belt as I was shunted from room to room to be poked, jabbed, measured and x-rayed by various different people. But the most bizzare thing of all was the miscommunication between myself and the lady on reception. Or perhaps she just doesn’t think much of Westerners..! Anyway, here’s the scene:
On arrival I’m handed a buch of forms to fill in and told to take a seat. I’m also given a ticket with a number – just like at the deli counter - and once I’ve filled in my medical history I keep my eye on the screen waiting for my turn to be called.
Within minutes, my number is flashing on the screen and directing me to counter 2 where I hand over my forms and answer a few more questions as the lady types my details into the system. When she’s done, she prints out a sticky label with all my info on, asks me to check all is correct and then applies the label to a sample bottle.
Lady: “Ok, you need to give a urine sample”
Me: “Ok, do I do that now?”
Lady: (with astonishment) “No, no. You go to ladies room down the hall and do it there”
Me: “Yes, I know! But do I do that now or later?”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She evidently thought I was going to drop my jeans in front of her, when all I meant to find out was whether I needed to do that now or at some point during my conveyor belt trip around each testing room in the doctors! I’m not sure whether to feel embarrased or just tickled pink by the whole funny situation…
Simple pleasures
Posted by: starqueen79 on: March 12, 2010
The best crisps ever
It’s a stupid little thing really, but ever since we moved to Singapore I seem to always be craving cheese and onion crisps. A classic case of not being able to have what you want, I guess. It’s such a quintessentialy British snack and outside of the UK, you just can’t get the same flavour. Overseas they tend to be sour cream and onion or plain cheese or plain onion. All poor substitutes.
There is nothing so satisfying, to my mind and tastebuds anyway, as a good old bog-standard bag of cheese and onion. Yum-diddlee-upmtious.
Last night, I was picking up something for tea in our local “european” supermarket, when the bargain bin caught my eye. It was full of 6-packs of Waitrose own brand cheese and onion crisps going at a snip for just $2 (less than a quid!). Without hesitation, I snapped two multi-packs out the bin and shoved them with glee in my basket. My joy was tri-fold:
1) Cheese and Onion crisps on sale in Singapore – whoop whoop!
2) 25g bags – unheard of here, it’s bumper pack or nothing
3) And going for a song (Brit food is generally way overpriced)
It’s now 19 hours since said purchase and I have just succumbed to my first delectable bag. I’m surprised I lasted that long. It wasn’t a pretty sight to watch – the whole pack devoured in less than two minutes and I even scraped the corners of the bag for tiny crumbs and had a good finger lickin. Damn they were goooooood!
The only downside to this revelation is that I am sure the cravings will soon disappear now I know I can satisfy them…..
I wonder what my next taste-of-home craving will be? Hmmmm I’m starting to drool over the idea of salt and vinegar drenched fish and chips in greasy paper eaten with a plastic fork……!
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