First moments and meals in Singapore

The second flight wasn't too bad either. Mostly because I was asleep for most of it. Customs was a breeze. I walked out looking around for someone holding up a sign with my name on it. My "graduate student buddy", Pony, was supposed to pick me up. Lots of signs, none with my name. Was pretty unsure what to do at that point, with no phone numbers to call or keys to dorm and it being a little passed midnight.

However, just then a woman came up to me. "Excuse me, are you Cathleen?". Good thing that I gave Pony a pretty decent description of myself over email. Ok, so all I said was that I was Chinese-Taiwanese-Irish-American, but apparently that was enough. That, or I just looked really lost. "You look a lot younger then I was expecting". Story of my life. "Yeah", I said, "I get that a lot".

Pony was so nice to me it was ridiculous. I almost wanted to ask if the University or NSF was paying her, although I don't think they are. She brought me a bottle of water, in case I was thirsty, and borrowed her dad's car. She took me to my dorm room, and when we discovered there were no pillows and linens (which I had been warned of a head of time), she took me out to the 24 hour NTUC FairTrade (Think Walmart or Meijer) and helped me get stuff. And when I bought a SIM card that did not work in my American phone, she offered to let me use one of her old ones.

The next day, she was going to meet me for lunch at 1pm. I set my alarm on my American phone to 12pm. I woke up at 1:39pm. I bolted to our meeting place, feeling sure I was going to miss her. But she was still waiting. I groveled and apologized, and said I couldn't believe she had been waiting for over an hour. ....Happily, it turned out that my stupid American phone did not convert the time correctly, so I had actually only kept her waiting about twenty minutes. (FYI: there is a 12 hour time difference between Singapore and Ann Arbor. Now I know. I should tell Verizon).

We went to lunch at this Malaysia restaurant. It was my first time having Malaysian food. It was amazing! We had this Malaysian/Indonesian fried chicken, called "Ayam Penyet" (translation "Chicken Flatten") that they pound flat and serve with bean cake, tofu, and chili. So yummy:

We also had "Soto Ayam" (translation: "Soup Chicken"). Traditional Malaysian/Indonesian spicy curry chicken soup. Also amazing. Chicken, noodles, yellow curry, eggs, veggies.

Yeah, I am so gaining 20 pounds while I'm here.

And last but not least, I also got a "Cendol"


Traditional drink/desert. Yeah, it looks kinda gross. Made even more awesome by the fact that Pony couldn't tell me what was in it. Actually, it was pretty good. Once you got over the weird texture and appearance. There was some kind of liquid that tasted vaguely like a canned frap coffee drink, and then there was milky stuff, and shaved ice, and green things that looked and felt like noodles, but were kinda sweet, and jelly stuff...
So I googled it, and according to Wiki it's "coconut milk, noodles with green food coloring (usually derived from the pandan leaf), palm sugar, Red beans, glutinous rice, grass jelly, creamed corn, and shaved ice. Yeah. Anyway, it was good.

After lunch, I was stuffed, so of course, we went for dessert. I protested loudly, but ate every bit of it.

First we got fresh mango rolled in sticky rice covered in coconut.

Which I informed Pony was something I will be dreaming about when I'm back in Michigan. Seriously. This stuff is so good it's gonna keep me up at night.

Then we had "Snowy" strawberries. Which is basically the fanciest, most amazing snow cone of all time, but creamy and with real strawberries. Think snow cone sorbet. Served with fresh strawberries, and lychee jelly balls that had an interesting way of popping in your mouth (like fish eggs but delicious).

I really don't understand how they were able to slice up the ice like that. I was telling Pony how there's lots of snow in Michigan. She had said it sounded wonderful. Um no. Born and raised in Singapore--one degree north of the equator, she had never seen snow before. When we got our dessert, she very excitedly asked if snow really looked like this. Um. No.

Oh, so much food. So little time.