Bye, bye Singapore

I'm sitting in th executive lounge of my hotel in Singapore, looking out over SunTec City and the city beyond while I wait for my flight. This has been an interesting trip, no doubt, but I'm happy to be headed home. Will I be back? Probably. Will I eat my way through the city again? Absolutely. Will I be a bit more touristy? Sure, why not! I might even check out the Night Safari if I get the chance. Unfortunately, too much work and too little time left little time for me to explore the city after last weekend.

Things to do next time I am back:

• Check out more hawker centers for lunch and or dinner. Visit Lau Pa Sat on the weekend for satay again.
• Eat more chili crab. And white pepper crab. And any other crab I can get my grubby hands on.
• Go back to Muthu's Curry for dinner. I had lunch at the outlet in SunTec City Mall today and it was amazingly good. And super spicy, in a good way.
• Find some chicken rice. I know its the local specialty and I was supposed to eat it during my stay. Somehow I screwed that up.
• Eat more laksa.
• Drink more Guinness Foreign Extra Stout while avoiding the local craptacular brewpubs. (Oh, Brewerkz was OK, but The Pump Room was total shit.)
• Shop less. I don't want to visit another damn mall anytime soon.
• Take more pictures. I failed on this count.
• Drink a Singapore Sling. Yes, I managed to not have any whilst staying here.
  

Clearly, I have a lot to do next time around. Amazingly they all seem to focus on food. Hmmm, is eating the national pastime?

Last night in Singapore

My time here is coming to an end. It has been fun, but I've been gone a long time (7 days) and won't make it home until Saturday night around 8 PM. I'm totally missing Maya and Steph right now.

I felt like my jet lag got better through the week, but tonight I'm just absolutely spent. Its 7 PM and the gin and tonic I had in the lounge has totally knocked me out. I was hoping to go out for one last nice Singaporean meal tonight, but I fear I am probably going to stick close to the hotel due to the incoming storms and my sleepiness. Teaching all week definitely takes its toll...

Last night I met a local for dinner. While I forget where we went for dinner, we ate an amazingly large amount and variety of Chinese food. Celeste would probably correct me and tell me it was Cantonese or Haianese or something else, but at the moment I forget what it is exactly. No matter, it was all good stuff that I would never find at home. Admittedly, I felt like a bit odd eating with Celeste since there are some significant cultural differences between how we eat. For instance, in Singapore people eat with a fork and spoon, using the fork to push food on to the spoon. No knife. I was totally klutzy trying this. I am sure I was even less graceful with my chopsticks, making a fool of myself. Do I pick the bowl of rice/soup up toward my mouth when eating or is that rude? I'm such a clueless American. But I'm learning!

However, it was a good time overall. I learned a bit of Singaporean culture and world view while sharing some American culture with her. I learned about SPGs (Sarong Party Girls), the fact that women (men?) can't rent an apartment until they are 35 or married, and the concept of a 3 room or 4 room (apartment with 3 or 4 rooms + kitchen) and the fact that Singapore is a "fine" country (in other words, you get fined for anything and everything possible). This is a bit of an odd country. Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore...

Its time for dinner, then I need to pack my bags. I'm leaving after class tomorrow on a 10:50 PM flight to Seoul. I'll spend Saturday in Seoul before heading home to Atlanta to see my beautiful wife and daughter. And those crazy dogs, too...

Saturday in Singapore

So its my first full day here in Singapore. Some initial thoughts:

The city is clean. Really clean. The only foul smells anywhere are from some of the stalls selling raw fish or other dried fish products that have that have a funky, fish out in the open on a hot as balls day smell to them.

It is hot. Damn hot. I walked around from ~8 AM until 11:30 AM and I am just dripping with sweat. Hot and humid, two great tastes that go great together. Bugis and the Arab district (Arab St, Hajj Lane) were the destinations of the morning. Mostly aimless wandering and some photos now and again as I orient myself. I did some shopping on Arab St. and found a nice present for Steph and some potential batik fabrics which we could hang in our entry way. Gotta check with the boss first and see if she approves before buying them.

Eating here is quite fun. First I ran into a fruit stand with some cut open dragon fruit, something I had never tried. So I bought a piece, it reminded me of a firm, purple kiwi, but not as tart. The hawker also convinced me to try some jackfruit, it was nothing special. I walked around the hawker food stalls in Bugis and sat down with some seafood laksa (seafood coconut milk soup, yum! I'm sure this was much better than what was featured on Top Chef last week), a Guinness Foreign Extra Stout and then a cool glass of soya milk to soothe my burning tongue. That laksa was seriously spicy but so very good. And cheap! All in I spent about US $6.

No signs of jet lag yet. I slept about 6 hours last night (1 AM - 7 AM, thanks Ambien!). Since the middle of the day is the hottest, I'm going to chill at the hotel for a bit before exploring a bit more tonight, possibly in Little India. I'll be poking around Wikitravel further to see if there is anything else that I need to see on my 2 days off here before work begin

Buenas Noches de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Hola!

Steph and I are in Buenos Aires, Argentina (BsAs to locals) for a week during the upcoming Thanksgiving holidays back in the states. We arrived this morning and spent the day getting acquainted with the city while walking around Puerto Madero, Microcento and Recoleta neighborhoods. So what's caught my attention so far?

FOOD!

Yeah, I'm obsessed with food and drink and this city is great for foodies. The food is good, plentiful and CHEAP! We just had dinner in one of the more upscale restaurants in Puerto Madero, La Caballeriza Puerto (yes, its almost midnight and we just finished dinner... that's typical here!). For the grand total of 120 ARS (slightly less than $40USD) we had a huge meal with more beef than two people should be allowed to eat, potatoes, salad and a bottle of Argentine malbec wine. I really am enamored with BsAs! And a bit tipsy too, since the bottle was mine to consume given Steph's current state.

More pictures and travel notes to come as the week goes on... look forward to stories about dulce de leche, dead people, side trips to Uruguay and yet more Argentinian beef! Just wait until I get a bit of mate in me for that extra caffeine boost before my next trip report!

Off to bed for now, a long day of shopping, sightseeing and eating is yet to come!

NYC

Friday night I flew to Newark where I met Steph to celebrate out fourth anniversary. Of course, I was a day late to the celebration, due to Cf.Objective() and work. I figured a trip to NYC would be a good way to say "I'm sorry" for having to be away.
Times Square

We got in to midtown Manhattan around 9:30 and searched around for someplace to eat dinner. You know how when you're so hungry that you can't seem to make a decision on where to eat? Combine that with being in a city that neither of us are really familiar with and you have a serious issue! We decided on an Indian place on West 52nd, but when we walked up to check out the menu, we saw the Indian place was empty... but the Greek Restaurant next door was quite busy! So Greek it is!
Katz's Deli

We sat down at Anthos and proceeded to wait for a menu. And wait. And wait. Finally we got some menus. And we waited some more. Finally I grabbed a waitress and explained to her that we were feeling ignored and would really like to order. Turns out I just ratted out our crappy waitress to our waitress! Oops! After this she got much better.

We had a few cocktails along with appetizers. Grilled octopus, a contemporary Greek salad with beets, radishes, endive, ramps, feta and fresh garbanzo beans and a raw meze platter with five different kinds of fish were brought out. The food was well prepared, nicely presented and rocked our world. Kyma, eat your heart out.
Katz's Deli

After dinner our waitress, who had previously enquired as to why we were in NYC, brought us out two different desserts on the house to help us celebrate. The first was some kind of round donut. filled with an orange blossom cream and served with burnt honey ice cream. I thought I would have a food orgasm! The second was a trio of three kinds of baklava. While they were all good, the donuts were the winner of the evening. We'll definitely be heading back to Anthos next time we're in NYC. After a quick drink at P.J. Clarke's it was time for bed.
Lips and Assholes
YUM!

Saturday morning we woke up early and headed for the only scheduled task of the day: shopping for clothes! Of course we were too early to actually shop, so instead we wandered around midtown and into Times Square where we ran into a run/walk for breast cancer research. Having participated in a number of the Susan B. Komen Walk for the Cure events (a.k.a. "Walk for Boobs!"), it was pretty cool to see the absolutely huge crowd as they walked and ran north from Times Square. We continued to wander around Midtown until around 10 AM when we finally got in a bit of shopping.
Pommes Frites

After a quick stop back at the hotel to drop off our newly acquired schwag we headed to the Lower East Side for lunch at Katz's Deli. Somehow our cabbie didn't understand East Houston at Ludlow and wound up taking us to Chelsea before we ditched cab #1 and hailed a second cab with a driver that understood my broken English. *smirk* After a corned beef on rye, potato knish, pickles (old, new and sour tomatoes) and a Dr. Brown's cream soda, we were fat and happy. We waddled out of Katz's and wandered around the Lower East Side and East Village for quite a while. Walking through the village we decided it was time for a drink and someplace to rest our feet. I thought I knew where we were, so I suggested we hit up McSorley's Old Ale House, the oldest continuously operating bar in NYC.

Unfortunately, we were a block too far north when we hit 2nd at St. Marks Place. But what a fortuitous mistake! As I tried Googling an address I spied Pommes Frites, a Belgian style pommes frites (French fries) shop. Being big fans of pommes frites ever since our first trip to Europe in 2001, we had to stop in for a bite. Yummmmmm. This also put us a half block from McSorley's where we stopped in for a few beers. (Definitely get the dark. The light was, well, too light.)
Drinking at McSorley's

With a nice beer buzz going we hopped back into a cab and headed up to the TKTS booth in Times Square. We picked up a pair of seats to Spring Awakening for that evening. I headed back to the hotel to relax for a bit — I was still exhausted from my previous 6 days on the road — while Steph did a bit more shopping.

Before the show we headed out for dinner at Dervish, a Turkish restaurant in the theater district recommended by our New Yorker friends, Annette & Jed. After another great dinner we sauntered over to the theater for the show. I'm not a huge fan of the theater, but the show was quite enjoyable. If you're in NYC, I highly recommend getting tickets.
MAN TITS!

After the show we headed back to the hotel and made it a pretty early night. The next morning we woke up early (again!) and headed to Park Slope to visit some friends. After brunch at n Austrian restaurant and a great walking tour of the neighborhood, it was time to head to the airport.

While it was a short trip, we had a great time in NYC celebrating our anniversary. Where will we go next year? Perhaps if Steph is lucky I'll take here to Bumblefuck, WI! Nah, probably not.