Mooncakes

We decided to go out last night. If you live in Singapore you'll just laugh. Yes, we tried to go out on the last night of Hari Raya Puasa which is also on a National holiday at the beginning of the Chinese Mid Autumn Festival (also known as the Moon Festival and a time people give and receive mooncakes). The plan was, dinner at Vivo and then a cab down to Chinatown to check out all the mooncake vendors.

Once at Vivo we were sucked into throngs of multi-generation Chinese families out shopping for mooncakes right in the middle of the mall. Having seen the line-ups just to get onto the MRT to downtown we decided to ditch the idea of Chinatown and just check out the mooncakes here.

The mall exhibitors were all patisseries from the big luxury hotels. They often had the classic flavours like lotus, egg yolk or red bean but others had adopted some other ideas like chocolate or rum raisin. While the most common cakes had a tough pastry on the outside, some were what they call "snow-skin" mooncakes which are coated with mochi. Through peer pressure we somehow ended up buying an elegant gift box of snow-skin mooncakes from Raffles hotel. This is what we got:

The yellow mooncakes are Champagne Truffle & Chocolate Ganache, the pink ones are Dark Rocher Chocolate, the orange ones Bailey's Chocolate and white ones are Rum and Raisin Chocolate Truffle. Now that's my kind of mooncake selection!

As luck would have it

There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.

—Robert Heinlein

Do I believe in luck? I'm not so sure. I believe in chance and I think we all have chances given to us all the time. We make decisions, we turn down offers for perfectly good or completely the wrong reasons. Sometimes we take risks, sometimes we calculate those risks and other times we just jump.

I met my husband a very long time ago. We were 11. It was chance. As teenagers we had the opportunity to become friends, that was a calculated risk (with diary pages to prove it). When we were 21 we decided to turn that friendship into a romantic relationship which was a moment where we both just jumped. Ten years later we are both really happy about that jump.

When we first moved away from Canada we used to hear some people say "you guys are just lucky" in a dismissive tone that just made me bristle. Why did it bother me so much? Well, it's like saying to me "you don't deserve this, you just sat on your ass and the world was handed to you."

I think sometimes these back-handed comments are jealousy or insecurity. I also think sometimes they just come from ignorance. The romantic idea of moving abroad is pretty abstract to most people. They couldn't imagine just upping suddenly and expatriating. And that certainly would be unimaginable. I don't know any expats who just woke up one morning and left. Most of us planned for a while, some of us many years even planned our jobs and educations around making a move one day. With that kind of planning and focus it's hard not to end up on an adventure.                

Singapore on Ice

So somehow eight months blew by with my skates sitting in the back of my closet. The lining has actually cracked and there was a spot of rust on the blade from the humidity. I finally went to Singapore's only ice rink today with a friend to see what it had to offer. It's small (studio size) with a few rows of bleachers down one side and a music room in the corner. Pretty standard set-up. They don't have hockey here and the figure skaters skate on public ice with a flood every 3-4 hours (tear). Yup, it's like Russia with nicer coaches and 99.9% less vodka. The rink is a little sketchy but I've seen worse in California.

I have to say it felt really good to get out there. I might have overdone it a little because I went home and passed out for hours. We'll just call that a "happy nap" and not a "you are not 19 anymore nap."

Art in Singapore

Most people who just visit Singapore report that it's a sterile place, with more sky-rises than soul, with no independence from simply consuming and regurgitating art and design from other places. There are art galleries but it's true, you don't see alleyways of graffiti or hear independent artists playing music at bars in the evenings. It's hard to find the boutiques with hand made things and independent clothing labels. That said, Singapore's art scene is there, it's underground and it's popping up every now and then if you know where to look.

We went to check out a Flea Market this past Saturday called Pubic Garden. The market was a small collection of tables at a venue known as the Old School.  About half the vendors were girls clearing out their closets (hey at least they supported something good with those knock off handbags) and the other half were independent artists with their handmade goods. The artists represented a little group spanning the underground network of art here in the city and I wanted to show off a few that I thought were quite remarkable. The first was an Illustrator, a young woman who in known as MessyMsxi. Her work was a brilliant narrative about the human experience. The two books I looked at were her view into our world of waste and pollution.

thelittledromstore.tumblr.com

I also found the table for Books Actually. They have an independent book store in Singapore and showcased chapbooks and notebooks with local talent and some interesting typography.

mercurybrief.com

There was also a table with a collaboration of graphic designers and artisans. Check out Session and Pupil People.

So that's the tip of the iceberg. I'm looking forward to checking out some cafes and galleries off the beaten path in the next little while. Art is here in Singapore but you need to look for it and sometimes I think that hidden or underground nature is something we reminisce about it the West. How many times have you seen a sullen hipster complaining that everything is mainstream? How many artists have you known who are constantly in the swamp of post-modernism complaining that it's all been done before? Cheers to emerging.

Hari Raya Puasa and an American BBQ

Last night we went to Joo Chiat to check out an American BBQ restaurant called Smokey's. Smokey's turned out to be a cozy gastro-pub serving up a menu of smoked BBQed meats with classic American sides in portions we haven't seen since we left the US. The food quality was very high, beer list was impressive and they serve California wines too!

Another wonderful thing was the lack of second hand cigarette smoke. I'm not sure if they allow smoking but their patrons certainly weren't going there. If it stays that way we'll be back often!

After dinner we took a stroll through the Hari Raya Puasa night markets. I had no idea this night market was even going on or that it had taken over so many city blocks down at this end of town. You could literally walk for hours and not reach the end! The goods are Malay and Indonesian and are mostly clothing, linens, furniture and festive foods. We found a vendor with Javanese lanterns and bargained our way into purchasing three. Now I need a good electrician so I can turn these into chandeliers. 

Thieves Market

Thieves Market, a set on Flickr.

Yo-ho yo-ho it's a pirates life for me. OK so these aren't thieves, or even shady characters. The men of the Thieves Market are uncles with collections of junk ranging from broken watches to used power tools. The road is packed with Singaporean men poking around the heaps of treasures. We didn't find anything we needed but if we ever need a box of cassette tapes, we'll be back.

The market is off Sungei Road along Pitt Street. The best time to go is the weekends around mid day.

The Abandoned Barracks of Dempsey Hill

We went for brunch with some new friends up on Dempsey Hill today. Afterwards they took us on a walk we'd never done before. It turns out that beyond the squeaky clean rows of white-washed restaurants on the well-developed side of Dempsey Hill is an old road lined with the old forgotten barracks that haven't been touched for a very long time. It's not often we see things that haven't been restored or rebuilt in Singapore. Some of these buildings would make great little art galleries or cafes. I wonder if humans will reclaim them before nature does?

Smashed Chicken, are you feeling Lucky?

Ok, so in the Lucky Plaza mall there's this restaurant on the 4th floor that sells Indonesian food and it's popular enough that the lineup wraps around the corridor by 6:00pm. What do they sell? Well, we had smashed chicken and smashed dory fish. Basically it's fried meat with a crunchy dried shrimp topping, some tofu and tempeh chunks, side veggies on a banana leaf and then a chilli sauce that that's a little darker and hotter than the sauce for Nasi Lemak. It's served with a side plate of rice. Don't forget to order a crazy coloured
drink with condensed milk in the bottom.

Booking side trips from Singapore

I do tons of research on travel all the time and often end up booking or researching things for friends and family too. Honestly there's no trick! It's just me with usually a bunch of tabs open and some of the following websites running.


FLIGHTS

Skyscanner
I went into a travel agency and watched the agent pull up Skyscanner to find me flights. Then she quoted me an unbelievably high rate (she gave herself a $200 commission on a $500 flight). I left and went home and typed in Skyscanner to discover that she could, in fact, see all the discount flights as well as flights from bigger airlines. Lesson learned, start at Skyscanner at home, don't use an agent and then go to the airline's site to book as not all flights come up on skyscanner.

KLM
Sometimes it's good to just check the KLM site to see what deals might be coming up. They run flights from Holland to Bali via Singapore. This flight is always cheaper than booking on Air Asia for the same trip AND you don't have to throw a tantrum trying to use the Air Asia website.

Berjaya Air
Never heard of it? It's a small Malaysian airline with fairly new planes that go to the various Malaysian islands and they are pretty cheap. They also partner with local resorts and offer deals. This is probably the easiest way to get to Tioman, Redang or Langkawi. They won't come up in any other travel sites. You have to book flights directly through them.

Tiger Airways
They are a royal pain in the arse to deal with but sometimes there are good deals especially in off seasons and to locations that aren't as popular with western visitors.


ACCOMMODATION


Agoda
I often start with using Agoda to look for hotel deals. I always keep Trip Advisor open while I do this so I can check actual experiences and rates. I've had 50% off really neat places on this site but I've also had to cancel a booking when I all of a sudden realized that my quoted rate was not what they put through on my credit card! Just be wary. It's not a scam per say but it can have some tricky wording just before the final check out.

AirBnB
I had no idea AirBnB was in Asia! Seriously I discovered this today. We use this in North America a lot and it's a great way to find reasonable vacation rentals and nightly B&B accommodation. I was just skimming through what's available in Bali for instance and there are some really good deals. Well worth spending some time on here.


TRAVEL APPS

It's no secret that I run everything in my life from my iphone. When I travel it's my most trusted sidekick. Here's what I use:

Tripit
Forget Tripit pro. I had it for a year and it never did anything amazing it was supposed to. Just get the basic, free account, forward your itineraries and voila. Everything neatly ends up compiled in one itinerary. I usually need to type in B&Bs and some obscure modes of transit but generally it's pretty easy. This is where i look to check flight times, confirmation numbers and to share my itinerary with my co-travelers. It works without data/wifi but doesn't refresh so scroll through your itinerary right before you leave home to make sure you have it all loaded.

Trip Advisor
I have to say I'm pretty thrilled with this app. We had wifi in our car in New Zealand and finding a place to eat lunch on our road trips was so easy! We'd pull over, type in the name of the town, tap the highest rated option and then ask it to guide us there with this little compas arrow. So simple.