On May 27, 2007 a couple of friend's and I went to see Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' at Fort Canning Park here in Singapore. It was closing night and the house was packed. What made this performance especially interesting was the venue; it was outdoors! It looked as if it would rain, but the director made us all will the rain away, and stay away it did. The show went off without a hitch!
The play was a modern rendition of Shakespeare's classic play. One obvious modern touch is when Hermia went frolicking in the woods with her pink backpackers sac, runners and small booty shorts. I think she was trying to hook up with Lysander in the forest; they say they were try to 'elope.' They even managed to incorporate modern music into the script, although the exact titles slip my mind.
The set and effects were quite good considering the play was outside. They strung lights through the trees (okay, that part's easy but still pretty) and also had this big metallic box that that opened up from all sides. People come out of there (again, no surprise), but these giant Swiss balls (like the ones you do your ab crunches on), escaped as well. They were the size of two men standing on top of each other, no joke. I still haven't figured out what purpose they served, but they looked cool, that's for sure.
The costumes were great. Everything seems whimsical and dreamlike, which I'm sure is what Shakespeare intended. I often wonder what fairies looked like in Shakespeare's day? OK! I only thought about that during the play, but that's beside the point. It's still a valid question!
Like any good love story, everyone lives happily ever. Man I love it when life is all shits, giggles and rose petals...
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Brown...deep down
I am brown, deep down. I really had no idea. Right from the time I arrived in Singapore people have noticed that I am willing to eat pretty much everything known to man, save for puppies, kitties and any sort of blood based beverage. Now don't be mistaken. Those are not popular in Asia, at least not the parts I've been. But if I ever get in with a tribe in Africa, I'll have problems when they slit the goat's throat, mix it with blood and down that shit like it's a fine, aged whiskey. No siree.
My good friend Lorena noticed the same thing when I was in Mexico about 6 year ago. Man, I can't believe it's been six years already. Wow. Anyhow, I ate pretty much everything they put in front of me, and loved every last morcel of it. It was a running joke in her house when her mother would ask 'Are you hungry?' What a silly question. 'OF COURSE I'm hungry!' was my response. That's because I usually was. The only dish I did not like was 'Menudo Soup', which is a traditional Mexican dish made from trip. That is a cow's stomach, for those of you who aren't familiar, and has the consistency of fat. In fact, I spit it out and told her they forgot to take out the fat at which point I got this look 'It's not fat, you idiot...' Oopsy!
I can tell I'm becoming localized mostly as a result of the large quantities of chili and tobasco sauce I can eat. At Sapna's going away lunch, I loudly declard to the entire table that I personally believe that tobasco sauce is MUCH hotter in North America, because I can barely eat any of it back home. I was promptly informed that all tobasco sauce is made in the same factory in the United States, and that I'm eating the same sauce I eat back home. The only difference is that the ol' taste buds had acclimatized to the constant barrage of spice. When I go back home, I think I'll find all the food will be bland.
I can also slurp noodles like the best of them. I wasn't sure if this was a good thing when one of my mates pointed it out, but at according to Miss Martha: 'it's a good thing.'
The remaining challenge: Try 'Pig's Organ Soup.'
If I can shovel that down, I will be 'completely brown' not just 'brown, deep down.' I'm looking forward to it.
My good friend Lorena noticed the same thing when I was in Mexico about 6 year ago. Man, I can't believe it's been six years already. Wow. Anyhow, I ate pretty much everything they put in front of me, and loved every last morcel of it. It was a running joke in her house when her mother would ask 'Are you hungry?' What a silly question. 'OF COURSE I'm hungry!' was my response. That's because I usually was. The only dish I did not like was 'Menudo Soup', which is a traditional Mexican dish made from trip. That is a cow's stomach, for those of you who aren't familiar, and has the consistency of fat. In fact, I spit it out and told her they forgot to take out the fat at which point I got this look 'It's not fat, you idiot...' Oopsy!
I can tell I'm becoming localized mostly as a result of the large quantities of chili and tobasco sauce I can eat. At Sapna's going away lunch, I loudly declard to the entire table that I personally believe that tobasco sauce is MUCH hotter in North America, because I can barely eat any of it back home. I was promptly informed that all tobasco sauce is made in the same factory in the United States, and that I'm eating the same sauce I eat back home. The only difference is that the ol' taste buds had acclimatized to the constant barrage of spice. When I go back home, I think I'll find all the food will be bland.
I can also slurp noodles like the best of them. I wasn't sure if this was a good thing when one of my mates pointed it out, but at according to Miss Martha: 'it's a good thing.'
The remaining challenge: Try 'Pig's Organ Soup.'
If I can shovel that down, I will be 'completely brown' not just 'brown, deep down.' I'm looking forward to it.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Tiger and the Arts + Paulaner Brauhaus
As if I hadn't consumed enough calories in the week prior, Jens, Kristin and I (Canadian Kristin, not German Kristin nor Norwegian Kristin) decided to grab a couple Tigers Saturday night from the 24 hour store, march on top of this damn cool media and design/arts building here on campus, and chat away about life in Singapore and our plans for the future. F.Y.I.: Tiger is a famous Singaporean beer. Just for good measure and to keep myself honest, I picked up a 'Big Bau' AND Potato chips to accompany my beer. I needed neither but craved both. A Bau is a Chinese bun filled with meat/vegetable/red been etc, and a 'Big Bau' is, well, bigger :) A beer would have been fine, but leave it to Sean to go overboad and get some 'extras.' In my defence, I didn't finish the chips. Yea!
As per usual, we were all looking DAMN fine in our best ragged shorts and t-shirts as we sweated our guts off outside in the hot and humid air; even when it 'cools down' at night, it remains hot and muggy. No bother, we came here for a new experience, and new experiences we shall get. I won't get into the niggty gritty of our conversation here because it was a 'you had to be there kinda thing,' but suffice it to say, we connected on a deeper level for sure.
The next day I hauled my arse outta bed relatively early (around 10:15a.m., which is REALLY EARLY for a Sunday), and went downtown to Paulaner Brauhaus for an absolutely AMAZING German brunsch; the Germans assure me this isn't 'fusion' food and that it really is quite authentic. Needless to say, the weekend was a total write-off calorie wise, if you hadn't already figured that out. In good fashion, I stuffed myself with as much German beer, food and desserts as I possibly could in the 3 hours we were given. I had to justify the S$47 price tag. Considering that free flow beer is included with the buffet, it's a price and experience you just can't beat.
Like any good German, I toasted my beers with an authentic toast to the 'apfelstrudel' and 'kinderüberraschungsei' Gods. More on this later.
P.S. When I source some photos, I'll post a few up here.
As per usual, we were all looking DAMN fine in our best ragged shorts and t-shirts as we sweated our guts off outside in the hot and humid air; even when it 'cools down' at night, it remains hot and muggy. No bother, we came here for a new experience, and new experiences we shall get. I won't get into the niggty gritty of our conversation here because it was a 'you had to be there kinda thing,' but suffice it to say, we connected on a deeper level for sure.
The next day I hauled my arse outta bed relatively early (around 10:15a.m., which is REALLY EARLY for a Sunday), and went downtown to Paulaner Brauhaus for an absolutely AMAZING German brunsch; the Germans assure me this isn't 'fusion' food and that it really is quite authentic. Needless to say, the weekend was a total write-off calorie wise, if you hadn't already figured that out. In good fashion, I stuffed myself with as much German beer, food and desserts as I possibly could in the 3 hours we were given. I had to justify the S$47 price tag. Considering that free flow beer is included with the buffet, it's a price and experience you just can't beat.
Like any good German, I toasted my beers with an authentic toast to the 'apfelstrudel' and 'kinderüberraschungsei' Gods. More on this later.
P.S. When I source some photos, I'll post a few up here.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
The Devil Eats Prata
Most all of you know that I enjoy my food. A little bit too much at times. While others seem smitten with drinking, which is a popular worldwide past-time among young and old alike, I enjoy food. I like to say that I prefer to chew my calories rather than simply swallow them. In fact, my first love affair in Singapore was with Prata, which are these Malay-Indian bread things that are basically made of butter, flour and oil. Four of those things in one day and I had to buy new clothes.
I gotta say that I'm becoming quite the fatty mcfatterson over here in Singapore. The food is great, but talk about oil and carb overload! You get a humongous helping of rice with every meal (because it costs nothing) with some vegetables fried in oil (which ARE delicious, I assure you) and a bit of meat. People say they 'sweat out their weight' because it's so damned hot and humid. What do I have to say to that? Malarcky!
I've started asking for 1/2 helpings of rice (which turn out to be 2/3 helping, but I won't tell if you don't) and trying to opt for less oily meats and veggies, but that proves to be difficult. Today Jens (my German roomate) and I went to the University gym and worked out our upper bodies; I think I'll be able to feel it tomorrow. It's so damned hard to make it to the gym every day though...I'm so tired after work that I'd rather just go home, sit on my ever expanding ass, and read 'The Devil Wears Prada.'
If my inner hunky mchunkerson is ever going to come out of his cocooon, I gotta start eating better and exercising more. If not, I'll be a fat boar by the end of the decade.
So there it is, I've made myself semi-accountable to all of you. Eat it up and feed it to me if I weight more than 150 pounds when I come back to Canada!
I gotta say that I'm becoming quite the fatty mcfatterson over here in Singapore. The food is great, but talk about oil and carb overload! You get a humongous helping of rice with every meal (because it costs nothing) with some vegetables fried in oil (which ARE delicious, I assure you) and a bit of meat. People say they 'sweat out their weight' because it's so damned hot and humid. What do I have to say to that? Malarcky!
I've started asking for 1/2 helpings of rice (which turn out to be 2/3 helping, but I won't tell if you don't) and trying to opt for less oily meats and veggies, but that proves to be difficult. Today Jens (my German roomate) and I went to the University gym and worked out our upper bodies; I think I'll be able to feel it tomorrow. It's so damned hard to make it to the gym every day though...I'm so tired after work that I'd rather just go home, sit on my ever expanding ass, and read 'The Devil Wears Prada.'
If my inner hunky mchunkerson is ever going to come out of his cocooon, I gotta start eating better and exercising more. If not, I'll be a fat boar by the end of the decade.
So there it is, I've made myself semi-accountable to all of you. Eat it up and feed it to me if I weight more than 150 pounds when I come back to Canada!
The Phantom of the Opera was Here!
The Phantom of the Opera is rolling through Singapore! Kristin and I, one of my Germans, decided to shell out the big bucks and attend. At S$120 bucks it was a bit of a strech, but if it's been around for a gazillion years I knew it would be good. The performance didn't dissapoint!
The staging was excellent; I was especially amazed at the flawless set transitions that seemed to occur every few minutes. My 2 favorite parts of the show are the opening sequence, after the auction, when we hear the 'Phantom of the Opera' theme song for the first time (also when they raise the chandellier). The bridge scene was also spectacular, when they create a mock-river on stage, complete with loads of candles and a boat! Really great stuff.
My advice to people who know nothing of the show is to learn the songs before you go! The accoustics are excellent, but I had no idea what the Opera star was singing because she was trilling every second word; she was speaking English. Because it was my first Phantom experience, I was content to absorb the staging and costumes and will focus more on the songs when I see it again in London.
The staging was excellent; I was especially amazed at the flawless set transitions that seemed to occur every few minutes. My 2 favorite parts of the show are the opening sequence, after the auction, when we hear the 'Phantom of the Opera' theme song for the first time (also when they raise the chandellier). The bridge scene was also spectacular, when they create a mock-river on stage, complete with loads of candles and a boat! Really great stuff.
My advice to people who know nothing of the show is to learn the songs before you go! The accoustics are excellent, but I had no idea what the Opera star was singing because she was trilling every second word; she was speaking English. Because it was my first Phantom experience, I was content to absorb the staging and costumes and will focus more on the songs when I see it again in London.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Tioman Island, Malaysia
A bunch of us foreigners (8 Germans, 2 Canadians and 1 French) decided to work it up in Malayisa over the Singapore Labour Day long weekend. It's an island 32 km off the coast of Malaysia, and was featured in the 1958 movie 'South Pacific'. TIME picked Tioman Island as one of the world's most beautiful islands in 1970. In addition, it's 12,383 hectares of rainforest are protected by the Malaysian government. Thanks Wikipedia!
Normally people catch busses either from Singapore (expensive) or from Johor Bahru (the Malaysian town on the Malaysian-Singapore border) to the Malaysian town of Mersing, then catch a 2 hour ferry ride to Tioman Island. We decided to be a little bit different, in part because we're lazy and the buses were full. We ended up catching cabs from Johor Bahru to Mersing, which is a little over two hours. Now you may think that we got killed with charges by doing this, but we managed to organiz 2 cabs to Mersing for 260RM (about C$85). Divided by the 7 who initially went together, it was a bargain.
We stayed at Salang based on the recommendations of others who had gone before us; it was a great choice. The first day we chose hostels, and almost got screwed over because it's difficult finding places to stay for 10 people, then lounged on the beach, ate some excellent food and just relaxed. Sunday, our second day, was also spend lounging on the beach and messing around in the ocean. I say 'messing around' because I can't actually swim, so this consisted of my floating in the ocean, trying to tread water and swimming about 30 meters before exhaustion set in. One of my goals is to now learn how to swim! Monday we took a boat ride around the island, where we got to scuba dive a couple times, look at some pretty beaches, and went up to this nice, but small, waterfall. I'll throw up links at the end of the entry to my Tioman pics, the most of which are us at this waterfall. I think it's obvious to say that we drank beer at night at the few bars there are on Tioman, talked with all the friend's and got very little sleep. Tuesday we left around 2p.m., so we had breakfast, packed, chilled on the beach one last time, then popped on the ferry for our adventurous ride home.
A word about the ferry...
We started our journey on crystal clear waters, but after about an hour a storm started to brew. Initially the clouds came in and the sea got a bit rough, but we were okay. Sittin on the top meant that we were basically out in the open with a tarp over us. Needless to say, we got soaked. The weather continually got worse to the point where we couldn't see in front of us and the engines were working like made to propel us on. We finally made it into Mersing, soaking wet, where we found some 'private cabs' to take us back to Johor Bahru. This was an interesting choice, because we passed a bunch of police on our way to J.B., one of which saw my pretty white face and pointed to all his buddies. About 3 minutes after that we were stopped at the side of the road and our cabbie had to pay the officer 50MR as a bribe; apparently he did not have a cab license. The cabbie asked us if we'd pay the 50 Ringgit, but Krisin and I had nothing of that. It's not our fault we found illegal cabs! At any rate, we made it back to J.B., had some eats in their modern supermall, then walked accross the river-boarder to Singapore.
All in all, a great weekend where we got to bond with some of the new arrivals. I'll be travelling with a few of them at the end of the Month to Kuala Lumpur, my last long weekend in Singapore :(
Look out for a post about that
Here are links to my pictures, and to the videos I took of our ferry ride home:
Tioman Island Pictures: http://ualberta.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2042544&l=4ac93&id=120402234
Ferry Ride Home 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjZZpJcrGsk
Ferry Ride Home 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVAChgd-kmo
Enjoy!
Normally people catch busses either from Singapore (expensive) or from Johor Bahru (the Malaysian town on the Malaysian-Singapore border) to the Malaysian town of Mersing, then catch a 2 hour ferry ride to Tioman Island. We decided to be a little bit different, in part because we're lazy and the buses were full. We ended up catching cabs from Johor Bahru to Mersing, which is a little over two hours. Now you may think that we got killed with charges by doing this, but we managed to organiz 2 cabs to Mersing for 260RM (about C$85). Divided by the 7 who initially went together, it was a bargain.
We stayed at Salang based on the recommendations of others who had gone before us; it was a great choice. The first day we chose hostels, and almost got screwed over because it's difficult finding places to stay for 10 people, then lounged on the beach, ate some excellent food and just relaxed. Sunday, our second day, was also spend lounging on the beach and messing around in the ocean. I say 'messing around' because I can't actually swim, so this consisted of my floating in the ocean, trying to tread water and swimming about 30 meters before exhaustion set in. One of my goals is to now learn how to swim! Monday we took a boat ride around the island, where we got to scuba dive a couple times, look at some pretty beaches, and went up to this nice, but small, waterfall. I'll throw up links at the end of the entry to my Tioman pics, the most of which are us at this waterfall. I think it's obvious to say that we drank beer at night at the few bars there are on Tioman, talked with all the friend's and got very little sleep. Tuesday we left around 2p.m., so we had breakfast, packed, chilled on the beach one last time, then popped on the ferry for our adventurous ride home.
A word about the ferry...
We started our journey on crystal clear waters, but after about an hour a storm started to brew. Initially the clouds came in and the sea got a bit rough, but we were okay. Sittin on the top meant that we were basically out in the open with a tarp over us. Needless to say, we got soaked. The weather continually got worse to the point where we couldn't see in front of us and the engines were working like made to propel us on. We finally made it into Mersing, soaking wet, where we found some 'private cabs' to take us back to Johor Bahru. This was an interesting choice, because we passed a bunch of police on our way to J.B., one of which saw my pretty white face and pointed to all his buddies. About 3 minutes after that we were stopped at the side of the road and our cabbie had to pay the officer 50MR as a bribe; apparently he did not have a cab license. The cabbie asked us if we'd pay the 50 Ringgit, but Krisin and I had nothing of that. It's not our fault we found illegal cabs! At any rate, we made it back to J.B., had some eats in their modern supermall, then walked accross the river-boarder to Singapore.
All in all, a great weekend where we got to bond with some of the new arrivals. I'll be travelling with a few of them at the end of the Month to Kuala Lumpur, my last long weekend in Singapore :(
Look out for a post about that
Here are links to my pictures, and to the videos I took of our ferry ride home:
Tioman Island Pictures: http://ualberta.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2042544&l=4ac93&id=120402234
Ferry Ride Home 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjZZpJcrGsk
Ferry Ride Home 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVAChgd-kmo
Enjoy!
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