Number Two Singapore Flyer
24 August 2012

Our second week in Singapore we continued to reside in the hotel at the end of Orchard Road. Probably the glitziest mall on Orchard is the ION Orchard. We passed through the ION a lot, as the nearest MRT (subway) was there. While we didn't have much we needed to buy at the upscale stores in the upper levels, there was a good food court downstairs, where we ate several times. One Singapore specialty is carrot cake, so named because it is made with radishes. The "cake" part is kind of a steamed rice pudding with shredded radishes (daikon, maybe). It is cubed up and cooked with garlic, eggs and maybe some chili paste and salted radishes. "Black" carrot cake has sweetened soy sauce added. An oyster omelette seems to be white carrot cake with oysters added near the end.

There are two food courts near my building at school, and I've been patronizing the stalls at both of them. Lots of choices: claypot soup, Vietnamese noodles, Indonesian chicken and smoked duck, Korean bulgogi, Malaysian food. The Malaysian food is halal, and comes served on different-colored dishes, with a separate dish-return station. Both courts have a "Western Food" stall, which seems to mean anything served with potatoes. I may not get around to that one. Usually for dessert I get a juice drink, which is either made to order with a juicer for fibrous fruits and vegetables, or just whipped up in a blender with ice for fruits with softer flesh. Some recent choices: starfruit, kiwi-soursop, strawberry-mango, dragon fruit. So far I am having no problem eating one new thing a day.

Kaye and I are learning some of the local fruits, and how to get into them. Dragon fruit looks formidable (go search it on line), but is pretty easy -- it has a red rind that is easily trimmed off leaving a white flesh with hundreds of black seeds -- about the size of small sesame seeds. You just eat them. Longans have a thin leathery rind that you peel off to reveal a translucent white fruit with a large seed in the middle. The mangosteen, I learned today, is the queen of fruits -- the yin to the durian's yang. It has a fairly thick, fibrous shell. My dean (Beng Chin Ooi) taught me how to open them by pressing on the ends until a split opens up, then you pry them in half to get at the sections inside. The sections are arranged like a tangerine, but are white, and some of them have a big seed. Beng Chin also introduced me to longkong (also called duku). It looks a bit like a large longan, but has sections inside like a mangosteen. Still to go -- rambutans, which look like punk cherries -- red and spiky all over.

On Tuesday of our second week we picked up our ID cards, so we no longer have to cart our passports everywhere. Having the card has enabled other things, like getting a bank account and enrolling for health insurance.

We arrived during Ramadan, called Hari Raya here. (I think it just means "fast" in Malay -- I know the holiday at the end of it is called Hari Raya Puasa, meaning "fast feast".) One evening when went to a huge night bazaar in the Geylang Serai neighborhood -- home to many Malay muslims. It is common to give gifts at the end of the season, so there were ample opportunities to shop for them -- clothes, sandals, rugs, furniture, cookware, home-made cookies, toys, videos -- plus lots of food stands. The people running the stands were quite willing to explain the food to us. Kaye had a spongy pancake folded in half with ground peanuts and sugar in the middle. I had Roti John -- "roti" = bread + "John" = the name of all British soldiers, according to the Malaysian hawkers. It's a kind of savory French toast with minced meat (mutton, often) and onions held on by the egg. The bread is generally baguette, and it usually served with squirts of mayo, chili ketchup, mustard and cheese sauce. For dessert I bought ice cream from a Turkish gentleman who had a long iron stick he used to pry ice cream out of canisters that I suspect were cooled with dry ice. He also had a shtick, where he'd appear to be handing you your ice cream cone, but you'd end up with an empty cone in your hand. Then he'd appear to almost drop the ice cream. I reciprocated in kind by pretending to drop the money when I paid him. He seemed amused by that. Another evening we went to the Ramadan bazaar on Arab street, next to the Sultan mosque. We did not have good luck catching a bus, so many of the booths had closed up for the evening when we arrived. But we did get a great Turkish meal at a restaurant nearby.

The next day was National Day, the 47th anniversary of Singapore becoming an independent nation. Lots and lots of Singapore flags hung from balconies around town. The flag is a red bar over a white bar. The red bar has a waxing moon (for "a young nation on the ascendent") and five stars (for democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality). We went to the Peranakan museum that day. The label Peranakan has been applied to a variety of groups in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, generally communities that originated from other countries (usually centuries back), have hybridized their customs with local ones, and speak some kind of Malay-based patois. I've read conflicting accounts of how much inter-marriage there was between these groups and the Malay population.

The most populous group are the Peranakan Chinese, also called Baba-Nonya (their words for gentleman and lady), who trace from Chinese immigrants who came as long ago as the 1600s, many Hokkien people from the Fujian province of China. There are also Indian Peranakans (both Hindu and Muslim communities) and even Portuguese Peranakans (called Kristang, meaning Christians). These latter communities are much smaller than the Peranakan Chinese, which the museum is mainly devoted to. The whole second floor is devoted to Peranakan weddings -- clothing, furniture, customs. The traditional ceremony spanned 12 days, and included visits back and forth between families, exchange of gifts, setting up special altars for the bride and groom, a hair combing ritual, a procession in fancy attire and a tea ceremony where the bride and groom serve their parents and other relatives. The traditional gifts are interesting. They are presented by the groom's family and are replaced or returned in part by the brides. For example, a pair of dragon candles are presented, and are replaced by a pair of phoenix candles (for burning on the altars); a leg of pork of which a piece is cut off and the rest returned; oranges (a multiple of 6, I think, and they were replaced by longans). One thing I found touching was special wedding garments that are only worn once, then stored to be placed in the person's coffin, so the bride and groom can recognize each other in the afterlife. The ceremony doesn't seem to be carried out in Singapore any more in full, but I did read of a couple who did a 3-day version. They had to talk to several aged "aunties" to get details.

The second floor of the museum talked about other parts of Peranakan life, including cooking and dining. I enjoyed watching some videos of food being prepared. One was about a dish made with a nut called buah keluak, which gets soaked, the insides scooped out, then mixed with other ingredients and re-stuffed into the shells. (I found out later these nuts contain hydrogen cyanide when fresh and need to be boiled, then buried for 40 days in ash before using.) One of the stalwarts of Nonya cuisine is laksa, which is a curry noodle soup with a base of coconut milk, and usually containing bits of seafood. It's common to eat laksa with otah, which is a mixture of fish or shrimp paste, coconut milk, chili and other spices. It is generally cooked in a folded-over banana or coconut leaf over coals. The museum also had a lot of porcelain Peranakan dinnerware that came from China and was used for special occasions. The dishes were ordered from China, but gnerally in much brighter colors than usual Chinese exports. They had a table set with it for a banquet, and pointed out that different people in the same family might eat with chopsticks or cutlery, or even with their fingers.

There was also a special exhibit on "Emily of Emerald Hill", a famous play here that traces the life of a Peranakan woman from young bride to matriarch in the upscale Emerald Hill neighborhood. It is inspired by the playwright's grandmother. The exhibit included items from the family house, posters and playbills from various productions (there have been over 100 of them) and clips of the various actresses (and actor) who have portrayed Emily. We are hoping someone produces it again while we are here. (However, it's hard to search for performances, because all the top results are for the museum show.)

That evening, we watched the National Day Parade, which has evolved to more of a mass gathering and set performance than a procession. It is very popular, and you had to apply in May for tickets if you wanted to attend in person, so we watched on television. Lots of pageantry -- two parts I liked were six soldiers balanced on one motorcycle and women in what I can only describe as "platform skirts" that were about 25' high. The following day I saw a little bit of the NUS Rag & Flag celebration for National Day. It has two parts, one where students from different dorms and schools go around the island soliciting money for charities, and a second day where they build floats (this year made of recycled materials) and perform dances that go with the theme of the float.

The next day found us at the Asian Civilizations Museum, near the Singapore river, housed in the Empress Place Building, which used to hold government offices. I was frankly overwhelmed by all the kingdoms, cultures and religions represented, and it is going to take me a couple more visits to get a coherent picture of how everything fits together. One fun part was a station (part of a touring exhibit on Islamic architecture) where you could design your own Islamic tile, by selecting basic geometry (hexagon, circle, square), multiplicity, and color palette. One you designed it, it was replicated and projected on nearby walls, in rotation with about 3000 others that people had designed. There was also an interesting permanent exhibit on the Singapore River, showing how it used to be full of lighters distributing cargo and hand-rowed ferries, how it became smelly and polluted, the clean-up and redevelopment along its banks. It also talked about the Marina Barrage, a low dam that impounds the Singapore and Geylang Rivers, forming a large fresh-water reservoir right downtown. (Water catchment and drainage are big things here -- I'll describe more another time.)