Number Four Singapore Flyer

21 September 2012

I'm teaching a course at NUS this semester, and that's been keeping me busy, so I've gotten a little behind in my reporting. Next week is fall break, and I get a short respite, so I hope bring my posts up to date.

I've seen a lot of student groups raising money for various service trips they are planning next week to places such as India and Cambodia. Some ask for an outright donation, but others sell snacks and other items. I bought a cup of popcorn from one group, which turned out to be sweet (though not so much as caramel corn). They also had cups of "candy floss", which I'd call cotton candy. One group had piglet cookies in little plastic baskets. It turns out these are traditional for Mid-Autumn Festival, which started recently. The basket is reminiscent of the baskets farmers would use to take live piglets to market. What really had me baffled was the group selling koi. Do students keep pet carp in their rooms? Has the goldfish-swallowing craze reached Singapore? I finally figured out that Koi is a popular cafe for bubble tea, which the student brought from off campus.

We saw our first play in Singapore a few weeks ago, as part of the Causeway Exchange Festival. The "Causeway" refers to the overwater connection between Singapore and Malaysia. It featured arts and performances from Malaysia, and was centered at The Arts House. The Arts House is the former parliament building. It was originally intended as a private residence, and has also served to house other parts of government, including the Court of Justice. I read in a historical description inside that there was a shipyard adjacent at that time, and the noise was so bad that the court's reporter would sometimes have to send someone next door to ask for quiet so he could hear testimony. (The court eventually moved to escape the racket.) Apparently in honor of this history, they had arranged heavy construction outside during the matinee we attended. The play was called "Indian Lawyers", and was written by a former Indian lawyer from Malaysia turned comedian. It centers on a thug accused of murder who wants an Indian lawyer, rather than a Malay one, because the former will be able to "speak Indian" -- turning words around to his advantage. The playwright appeared between scenes to explain what was coming up and what the issues were. I enjoyed it, but I think it would be better if more of the explanation could be carried by the dialogue.

Afterwards we went for a dinner of Roti Prata and Murtabak. Both are made of stretchy dough that is twirled and stretched out to form kind of a super-thin crepe. For the Prata, this crepe is folded around a simple filling (often cheese, onions or an egg) and cooked on a grill. The Murtabak has a more substantial filing with minced meat, onion, garlic and spices. In our case it was made with two of the crepes layered together. For dessert we had "Paper" Roti, where the crepe is cooked flat on the grill. A radius is cut, and it is rolled up in a cone, and stood up on a plate. In our case, it had chocolate syrup drizzled on.

The next day we walked down to West Coast Park, which fronts on the closest salt water to us. It sits along Jurong Channel, with the Singapore Yacht club docks off to the west, and a container ship facility past that; to the east is an area with ship repair yards. Looking out (through the haze that day) you see Jurong Island. Jurong Island is partially artificial -- several smaller islands have been tied together by land reclamation. It houses a bunch of oil refineries and chemical plants. (The companies there can directly pipe raw materials to each other.) Singapore actually exports more refined oil products than Malaysia or Indonesia, despite not actually having any crude oil or natural gas stocks of its own. Out past the shipyard we noticed these tall towers amid the cranes -- tall enough to have flashing lights on the tops. They didn't look like crane towers themselves, and it took me a little research later to figure out that they are the "legs" of shallow-water oil platforms. Each platform has three, and they are lowered down through the platform to rest on the seabed. After watching various games of frisbee and cricket, and following a boardwalk through a wetland, we stopped at a char siew (barbecued meat) restaurant my dean had shown me. We had "mixed meat for two" (pork, chicken, duck) and green beans with four spices. If you visit us, you will probably eat there.

I've started walking back and forth to work. While there is a bus that runs from near our apartment to the School of Computing, it sometimes takes a while to arrive and it is a very bouncy ride. Plus, it drops to twice-an-hour frequency after 7pm. Also, I need the exercise. It is actually possible for me to walk from the door of my flat to my office door and be under cover the whole way. (It's about a 22-minute walk.) It took me a while to work out the route, which takes me through buildings EA, E1A, E1, E4 and E5 of the Engineering College, then past the Chinese Library and the Central Library, past part of Arts & Social Sciences, and into the back of the School of Computing. After I sorted this out, my department chair pointed out to me that the ceilings on all the connecting walkways are yellow (including the stairwells and interiors of elevators on the main routes). However, I haven't actually been able to find a fully yellow route, though I occasionally still search when I have a little time going in or coming home. Based on some of the signage, I suspect there was some remodeling in Engineering that may have displaced one of the yellow pathways.

Kaye is making friends with the fruit lady at one of the nearby shops, and being instructed on new fruits, such as rambutan, Malay apple and wax apple. Rambutan is kind of a "punk" longan, with spiky red bristles all over the outside, but a white fruit with a seed inside. Malay apples and wax apples aren't really apples, but members of the myrtle family (along with cloves, guava and allspice). They are slightly more watery than an apple (but crunchy), with a hint of rose water.