Not only are we approaching our one year wedding anniversary, we are also hitting our 5-months of surviving Singapore anniversary. When you say "5-months" it doesn't seem like a very long time. But trust me, when it is 5 straight months of living in
tropical hell Singapore, every day counts.
Lots has happened in 5 months. We have suffered in corporate housing, found our own apartment, decorated it, bemoaned not having friends, made some friends (finally, yay!), travelled to three different countries (Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand- but Malaysia should count more than once since we have been there A LOT!), planned some super fabulous future vacations and much more. While Dave disagrees sometimes, I feel pretty settled here. There have been some bumps in the road, and its always tough even just to get the basis all ironed out, but I no longer feel like a tourist, I live here. This doesn't mean I don't occasionally feel the need to yell "I HATE this country" but it happens less and less. We have the big things figured out-we have restaurants we like, grocery stores we prefer to shop in, neat local stores we have discovered, cool neighborhoods to stroll in and we are still exploring and finding new great places all the time. We have met some really nice people in five months too and now that we are more settled, we are finding more time to spend with new friends and hopefully make more friends along the way. All in all, we still really miss home and our friends in the US, but we are hanging in there and trying every day to make the best of it.
And while 5 months doesn't seem that long, it has certainly been long enough that I am REALLY missing some of my creature comforts from the US of A. Thought I would share my top 10 list of American "things" I most miss:
10) Reduced Fat.... anything. I am often criticized by my none-too-healthy-eating husband, that some of the foods I eat can hardly be considered food, given their high chemical content. And sadly, this is true. I am a human that would eat fat-free anything. Having read all the literature that while it may in fact be fat free, its not super good for you, I have in the past years cut back on my chemically processed foods. But there are still some things that I indulge in with joy. Not in Singapore. They have never heard of the words "reduced-fat" or "fat-free." What this means for me is no fat-free mayo (sad), no fat-free hot dogs (gross- I know, but I love them) and worst of all no baked/fat-free potato chips (devastating- my Subway sandwich experience is not the same with out my FF chips). I am trying to think of this as a good thing- focus on "whole" foods- but there are just some foods that really benefit from a little fat free salad dressing!
9) Pickles. I guess a lot of these are going to be food related. I love dill pickle slices. I think they add a lot to a sandwich, go well chopped up in tuna salad, and make a lovely crispy snack. I have looked high and low for a little jar of pickles to stem my cravings to no luck. Thinking about asking my Mom to bring some...but it seems excessive.
8) Seasons. Its almost fall, right? And before this was summer? And when we got here it was spring? I dont know, its all the same here. To some people, living in constant sunny summer weather might be wonderful. But as a child of Colorado and it's 4 lovely seasons, I am finding myself not only annoyed at the heat but a little temporally disoriented. Sometimes I will catch myself thinking "Oh, we should really start doing X more while the weather is still good..." and then realize if we can do X today, we can do X basically any day. Its more than just the constant weather in Singapore, its hard to know where one should travel in the region because obviously the surrounding countries also don't follow normal seasonal weather shifts. If you want to go to Thailand or Malaysia, you have to know which "season" is the good season for which coast- because not all months are created equal. Its all a lot of effort to keep track of. We are joyfully fleeing the muggy tropics this weekend for some time in the Snow in Aussie and while I cannot tell you how excited I am, I am terrified that our bodies are so used to the constant blazing heat of Sing, we will freeze ourselves right off the mountain.
7) Seamless Web. Oh god, how I miss Seamless. Truly, madly, deeply miss it. For my non-NYC readers (Hi Mom!), seamlessweb.com is a marvelous website in NYC (and other places) where you can effortlessly order from 100000s of restaurants anywhere in the city and have it delivered to your door, usually your office door. It is life changing. The ability to have a different kind of food every night, and good quality food from good quality real restaurants is unbeatable. The dinner process in my office here is so incredibly disappointing after knowing the bounty of goodness that is seamless. The night secretaries send around the same sad, tired, disgusting three menus every night. My options are 1) totally inedible Chinese goop, 2) overpriced mediocre Japanese-ish food from the MRT mall or 3) decent Indian set meals (but how often can you really eat Indian?). And worse, everything in Raffles Place inexplicably closes at 8:00 or 8:30. Which means if you haven't resigned yourself to the not-so-thrilling offerings of the nightly delivery, you are left to eat McDonald's or nothing at all. It is sad. Gone are the days of ordering delicious healthy salads, or freshly made hummus and whole wheat pita, or gourmet sushi from fine dining establishments... or really anything yummy. It is heart breaking at times, and also doesn't lead to the most healthy eating habits (hello cup-o-noodles.) It is even more troubling when I log in to my Gmail only to find that seamless misses me too, and is trying to entice me to their wears with coupons and special offers. If they only knew the depth of my longing for them.
6) Fahrenheit. And it's other non-metric friends. Having lived in some metric-friendly places before, I have some tricks up my sleeve for living with some metric measures. Such as the good old "double it and add 30" approach to weather. (10 degrees C = ((10x2)+30 = 50 degrees F). Its rough, but it gets the trick done and I now know that anything over 30 degrees C is going to be unpleasant. But sadly, there are not tricks for everything. I try to figure out kilometers by thinking that a 5k race is like 2.5 miles.... but this is fuzzy at best. More confusing is kilograms....I cannot tell you how many times I have picked up the 10kg weight at the gym only to realize that I was in the wrong category. But the WORST is trying to cook in Celsius. All of my recipes are of course in F. So I frequently resort to google to figure out what 350F is in C. But of course its not a normal round number. And of course my oven is not digital and has wide increments on the dial. So I spend a lot of time squatting down in front of the tiny oven making educated guesses about whether the dial looks like its at 190C. It has created some serious cookie-mishaps and I am nervous to try anything more complicated that requires really specific heat. Looking forward to having a digital oven again stateside. It is almost more complicated though to try to use local metric recipes, because of course, all of my measuring cups are in...cups- that's why its called a measuring CUP! So when the instructions call for X grams of butter, I am screwed and back to google to sort out how many cups of something is in X grams.
5) High quality toilet paper. Enough said.
4) Ability to Google anything. I am a child of the google-age. I honestly cannot imagine what I would do in life with out google to tell me things. And in NY there is hardly anything you cannot find via google. Need a yoga studio in flatiron- google will find it for you. Need a pizza place near St. Marks- google is on it. Need a kitchen toys shop- click, click, you're there. Not so much in Singapore. This is partially because businesses here are not quite so savvy about having websites and also because Singapore is a small small place, and the internet is a big big place- so when you google things in Singapore, you often end up with results in the US or other places, which is clearly not that helpful. For example, just this weekend, Dave and I set up dinner with some friends at this pizza place we like near our house. We don't know the name, we just know where it is, and that we like it. Good enough for us, usually. Well the group grew from 3 to 5 to 10, so we needed a reservation and despite many thoughtful google searches could not find a website for this very happening pizza place. Dave was left to the old fashioned method and had to walk down there to make a reservation. Before this, I needed gardening supplies like dirt and pots, nothing exciting, but didn't know where to find it. Google was totally totally useless. It makes life just a little bit more complicated than it needs to be.
3) Good service. Service here in restaurants is appalling. I have several friends who are sticklers for good service and every time I sit down to a meal in Singapore I think about how their heads would literally explode if they were subjected to the poor level of service in Singapore. The list of maladies are too great to enumerate so I will stick to the highlights. The one thing that drives Dave nuts is that when they bring you the bill, they hover directly beside you while you sign your credit card receipt. This would be annoying in normal circumstances- give me some peace to calculate my tip!- but here it is worse, because "service charge" of 10% is usually included in the bill. But you have to check the actual bill to know for sure because some more western-friendly places, leave the tipping up to you, which we appreciate. But this is all exceptionally uncomfortable to do while the service staff is perched on your shoulder watching your every move. Ironically this is the ONLY time the staff will be this attentive. Good luck trying to get a menu and place your order in a busy place and don't hold your breath for a water refill. Another delight (and the last I will moan about) is that they don't believe in bringing out your entrees at the same time, even if it is only two people. So they just bring out whatever dish is ready first- and then you have to wait, sometimes a long time, for the other person's meal. Its ridiculous. And this is not to say that you never get bad service in the US- it happens. But in general, and especially at nice places, there is a standard of service that you can expect. I will relish the good service and polite common-sense behaviors of the US service industry much more when we return.
2) Mexican food. I would kill for a Big City Burrito. I would even kill for Chipotle. I expect to go directly from DIA to Big City Burrito upon arrival in the US, do not pass go, go directly to Burrito bliss. Dave is fully prepared that all we will eat when we are home in CO is Mexican (
El Burrito, Big City, Rio, repeat). If he is a good boy I might consider eating steak at the Charcobroiler once or twice too. What passes for Mexican food here is disheartening at best. Its ok, passable for some mushy misguided relative of Mexican food- but in no way stacks up to even the worst mexi-food in the US. I admit to being spoiled by the plethora of amazing Mexican food that is available in Colorado- but even in NY I can find many places to get a burrito to my liking. I was recently at a bar visiting a friend from out-of-town who was in Singapore visiting another friend. The other friend, an Indian Singapore local, was extolling the virtues of "Muchos" Mexican restaurant in Clarke Quay. I believe she may have even used the words "best mexican food ever." I first thought she was joking....hoped she was joking. But she was not (I am still sad for her). And while I tried to bite my tongue, I couldn't resist asking her if she was a crazy person. Don't get me wrong, Muchos is ok. And for Singapore, it might even be slightly-better-than OK- but really, how hard is it to make commercialized margaritas and fajitas? It is classic mass-appeal chain Mexican food- not anything to gush about and it is WAY overpriced. By a lot- even by inflated Singapore standards. Needless to say, she was a little offended at my passing harsh judgment on her favorite purveyor of chicken quesadillas. Luckily for me Singapore does usually have salsa in the stores and slightly stale imported tortilla chips- and since avocados are plentiful- guacamole is always an option. With out these things, I might be lost. I am trying to limit the things I ask my Mom to bring from Colorado to Sing Sing, but HIGH on my list of must-haves are the ingredients for home-made green chili. If they are lucky (and my Mom is feeling generous with her cooking skills) I might even invite our other expat friends over for some mouth-watering Mexican grub.
1) My friends and family, of course. Miss you all lots. Its been tough not having gchat at work to keep up with people and despite my best intentions, I am not always as good about calling as I wish I was. But don't think I am not thinking of everyone in the US! Miss you guys every day. Wish I was around to see the littlest Urband get bigger, wish I could cheer on my no-longer baby cousins in their sporting events; would like to have brunch with my girlfriends in NYC, would love to bum around the house with my Mom, miss taking my Grandma to lunch with her lady-friends, would have liked to attend some good friend's weddings this summer, miss seeing my Skad-friends at 4TS, could use a good night out with the L'ville and LSE team, and the list goes on. When you have friends as good as ours, there is a lot to miss. We cannot wait to see you all again soon. And.... as always, would love to host each and every one of you in Singapore, should your travel schedules permit =)
Apparently it is against the law in Victoria for tourists to touch Koalas. So despite a lifetime of looking enviously and longingly at other people's photos hugging the oh-so-cute not-actually-a-bear Koala Bear I will not be updating my facebook profile with an adorable picture of me loving on a cuddly Australian friend. 
