Food Friday 11 - Lunch

Happy Food Friday!

This week I was on a bit of a tight budget which meant not a lot of room for going out to eat.  So I decided the best way to fulfill my food Friday blog post for my avid readers was to give you all a glimpse of what work lunch looks like!  Lately I have just been bringing leftovers for lunch as, to put it nicely, my body doesn’t respond to the canteen food as beautifully as I would like.  But this past week I decided that it would be cheaper for me to get lunch at the canteen (café) for about $2.00 – 2.50 a day. 

So my lunch idea for food Friday actually hit me on Wednesday and so my recount starts there.  Let me first explain that Wednesday was a rough day for me…ok really this whole week was rough.  Without getting too much into it, I’ve been a bit frustrated at work, people were coming to work on my apartment which meant I had to sleep in the hot un-airconed 2^nd bedroom, and knowing that my trip back to the US is only a couple weeks away now made me just yearn to get back.  The truth is, as great as Singapore is, there are times that I just wish I could walk out my door and wish I was home.  Most days I’m not down about missing home but I just get little bits of oh if only I could grab a dunks on my way to work or CAN I JUST GET A PIZZA!  So this past Wednesday my morning started out tough and I went to the canteen with my fingers crossed that there would be just ONE thing I could look at and know what it was.  Oh boy was I in for a treat!!!  Chicken nuggets without bones!!!!  I wish I were joking about how exciting this was for me.  No joke-la!!  Being able to have chicken without bones is such a rare find here and to have it be chicken nuggets, well let’s just say I was about as happy as when Mom would let us get the Kids Cuisine dinners when the babysitter came. 

Egg, chicken nuggets, and random green veggie

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

Last Wednesday was Deepavali or Divali which meant we had a public holiday in Singapore (aka no work)!

I woke up to a cloudy day and had a quick chat with Niles, boy do I miss him.  Then the cloudy day quickly turned into a rainy day but that didn’t stop our group (Ethan, friend Tracey, Tracey's dad, and me) from heading to Chinatown to walk around.  We did the usual walk through all the different shops, managing to stay under the tarps overhead so we didn’t get completely soaked.  But to our surprise the rain still hadn’t let up yet.  Usually rain storms in Singapore will last for an hour or so then quit, but we’ve had a couple of these mostly rainy days which I guess means that it’s starting to turn to rainy season for us. 

          

 

Expo MRT and the MacRitchie Reservoir Treetop Walk

First let me apologize.  I finally came to a week were I did not meet my goal and thus did not post what should have been Food Friday 11.  The truth is I didn’t have anything new last week and on top of it just didn’t take pictures of my food to share with you all either.  But I promise to do better!

This weekend was a pretty tame one.  Friday night I had a nice run followed by a dip in the pool, which at 7:30pm was all mine as no one else was around.  Floating on my back, I kept staring up at the dark sky thinking how odd it is that it is night here and morning back home. 

Learning a New Type of English Laa

When I told my friends and family that I was coming to Singapore most of them asked about the language barrier.  Lucky for me, English is one of the national languages of Singapore and is widely spoken.  But I had kept hearing about this “Singlish” from friends and coworkers who had visited and wasn’t quite sure what to expect.  Basically what I knew was to expect to hear lots of la’s when the speak.  Hey!  I can say laaa says Laura.  Now that I’ve been here for 11 weeks I figured I had experienced enough of this silly language to give you all an education on how to speak Singlish and a glimpse on what my daily interactions include.

Weekend Recap - Chili and Black Pepper Crab and Cuba Libre

As you probably have noticed if you've followed along, Ethan and I have had quite a number of visitors joining us in Singapore!  Most of them were last minute trips and so it’s been good excitement being able to try new things with our guests as well as show them what we have come to enjoy here.

Last week Sucheta, a fellow co-worker from the US and alumni to our rotational program, came for work related reasons.  But lucky for us (and her of course) she was able to extend her time here to get a couple extra days to explore.  Later in the week, Ethan’s close friend and one of my former roommates Tracey came!  She was able to get a full week off to come and explore!

Food Friday 10

Well folks its Sunday and I have missed my deadline for Food Friday but I can't deny you all the pleasure of hearing the tasty eats I tried this week.

So this week's eats to share with you come from my meal with Bekah, my highschool friend who came to visit last weekend, and her friends.  If you check out my last post you'll see that we spent the day sweating walking around the botanic gardens.  Later on that night we met up with Bekah's friend's friend and his wife who are both Singaporean natives.  They took us to a local Indian restaurant which I was a bit hesitant at first seeing as my last experience was when I ate fish head curry.  For all those who have been reading my blog since the start (thanks by the way!) that meal of fish head curry happened in my 3rd week I was here aka a long time ago.  Thankfully this meal was delicious and the spices didn't upset my stomach this time. 

6 Year High School Reunion

It’s now been 10 weeks since I landed in Singapore and it seems that time has just flown by, especially since I’ve had a few visitors to look forward to coming and spending time with!  First Niles was able to come for just over a month, then it worked out for Amber to make a quick stop between finishing teaching in Thailand and heading back to the US.  And most recently a friend from high school reached out to me to let me know she’d be stopping in Singapore for a few days with two friends and wanted to meet up!

Bekah and I went to elementary school together, though didn’t get really close until we started spending 45 minutes together every day for 7th period in the bassoon section of our high school concert band.  That’s right!  I used to be a bassoon player and after reminiscing with Bekah on Sunday, we both agreed that not only would our fingers not remember where to go or which of the 5 left thumb keys to press but our cheek muscles would definitely not in shape to play a bassoon.

Something to Celebrate

Happy Birthday to this guy!

Friday was Ethan’s birthday!  To celebrate we met up with Singaporeans Melissa and Glenn at Hood bar in Bugis +.  Ethan and I hadn’t had dinner but were more in a munching, snack type mood so we shared bacon potato croquettes and truffle fries, yum!  Glenn ordered some fried calamari which was good, though I was skeptical of the moving dried fish pieces on top of it.  Lucky for us the bar had a happy hour special where pints were $10!!  So cheap to find here in Singapore, and I wish I was joking that seeing $10 pints of beer really makes me think I’m getting a bargain.  No joking-laaaaa.

Food Friday 9

Here we are once again.  Another week down and another post to recap the Singaporean pastime of eating.

Let me start by saying that this past week I took things pretty easy.  While I loved having guests to help fill the extra space in my apartment for a solid 6 weeks, I have taken the time to unwind after work and get some me time.  As a natural extrovert, I highly enjoy talking to and spending time with people.  However, in the past few years I've had a lot of time living on my own and farther away from friends and family.  One of the biggest lessons I've had to learn is using alone time to recharge me.  So the past few days I've taken the quiet after work hours to go to the gym, cook my own dinners, and just plain relax.  It was a wonderful and fun 6 weeks having guests and there are more to come, but I appreciate getting some time to recharge.

Reasoning for the above paragraph?  To better explain my lack of a variety of dishes to post about.  I kept it reasonably easy this week, meaning I made a huge batch of rice on Monday that lasted me through the week and required simple additions of veggies and tofu to make complete meals.

Enough’s enough, let’s get you all to the real point of this week’s post, the eats!

Supertree Grove

This post doesn't exactly follow sequence with what I've been up to but I realized I didn't talk too much to a fun night Amber, Ethan, and I had at Gardens by the Bay during Amber’s visit last week so I thought I’d share with you now.

Garden’s by the Bay is located just next to Marina Bay Sands, that big building with the ship on top that you've seen on my blog more than a few times now.  The gardens have two conservatories which you have to pay about $30 sgd to go into both.  I highly recommend them as they are cool experiences (especially the cloud dome) but if you’re on a budget, walking around the gardens proves to be just as interesting due to some unique pieces.

    

 

"I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike"

Happy Wednesday folks!  This past weekend was a holiday weekend which meant no work on Monday wahoo!

Saturday I sent Amber on her last trip before her journey home.  It was so nice having her here for a while but man did that week fly by!  And now she’s en route back home after 5 ½ months of being in Thailand.  It was nice to catch up and also to have someone to chat with about life on the other side of the world.  While our experiences are a bit different we could completely relate to the emotions and feelings you go through being far away from home and in a foreign place.

Sunday, Ethan, Glenn, and I planned to go to Pulau Ubin, a small island off the east coast of Singapore.  We were hoping to spend the day biking around the small island and checking out the nature.  Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones who had that in mind for Sunday.  When our cab dropped us off we were greeted with a queue worthy of those long hot lines in Disney World.  With close to a 2 hour wait in front of us and then having to wait with all those people to get back before the 12-person ferries stop running at sunset, we decided to save the trip for another day (and make note to get there earlier).

Food Friday 8

Happy, happy Friday everyone! Well happy Saturday.  I apologize for the late post but it was Amber's last night in Singapore and so we stayed out late and when we got back near midnight this girl was ready to go right to sleep.

This week’s post had me extremely nervous as Thursday night rolled around and I had yet to try anything new this week PLUS I had barely taken pictures of any of my meals.  Talk about the stresses of being a blogger, hah!  Luckily, Glenn (the token Singaporean friend of my travels here in Singapore) knew just what to do.  Amber, Ethan, Glenn, and I had planned to go to Chinatown Thursday night for dinner so I could introduce my intense love of xiao long bao from the Noodle Man to Amber.  I know, I know if we all had a nickel for every time I talk about my obsession with XLB aka steamed dumplings on this blog we’d all be rich (and you could all afford to come to Singapore and eat them with me).  But I am happy to say that Amber is officially in love with them too and completely understands my obsession or she has an awesome poker face.  Hey I’ll take it as a win for team XLB!

Amber's photo skills

                

 

Above photos courtesy of Ethan