First off, lucky you. All your food cravings can be met, however silly they are. Want to eat zhai mai fun every morning in your second trimester? God said, “Let there be vegetarian noodles.” And there was. In Telok Blangah Crescent. Three bus stops from your home.
If you’re feeling hot and heavy already, well, good luck with that. Extreme heat and humidity a pleasant pregnancy do not make. Hence, it may be a good idea to shower constantly or sit in front of the fan. (Which really messes with the Go Forth And Satisfy Food Craving objective.)
Walk everywhere like you’re a defensive tackle. This is because there is simply too many people everywhere, from the malls to the train stations to the hawker centers. Stake your personal space early with an arm around your belly and another outstretched as you weave through the crowds.
Hawker food tastes awesome for a reason: Salt. It may take a few days for your ang-moh-tized body to get used to the hawker food. Meanwhile, watch your ankles swell to twice their size from water retention. So drink lots of water, sit down, and elevate your feet often.
Be totally ballsy about sticking your belly out on trains and buses. This is the only way to counter the sudden onset of sleep condition known as iseeapregnantladycomingmywaysoibetterlookasleepinordertokeepmyseat. If that fails, sorry, Singaporeans are not known to be a civil people. You’re standing for the next 20 minutes.
Milk all the pregnancy sympathy you can get and have your friends and family cater to every single one of your food cravings. It matters that you fly home once a year to enjoy the food, and so it follows that it matters even more now that a (pregnant) you comes home to enjoy the food and feed the One-Mouthed Crave Monster.
Be prepared to hover. Ahem, ladies, you know what I’m talking about. Peeing in public bathrooms in Singapore is not necessarily the World-Class Experience you expect from a First-World/Third-World country. Throw in the fact you’re a pregnant, peeing lady, you better plan your sugar cane juice intakes carefully. And within waddling distance from a semi-acceptable receptacle.
Finally, it’s a beautiful thing to be eating for two when you’re in Singapore. You can’t avoid food even if you tried. Unlike Seattle, you’ll trip over savory options every 10 paces or so, available till late. Don’t screw it up. Pace yourself. You have a champion’s race to finish.
And er, in case I failed to mention earlier, I am with child. She is a hungry one. And as far as I can tell, going to fly here when she’s one to eat her own zhai mai fun.
This is why there are 20 people in line at any one time.
This is why the wait is at least half an hour.
This is why it will taste sublime even if it sucks.
This is why I can never recreate this in Seattle.
The man is an artist. You would think, with a line snaking around his stall, he would hurry it up a little. No such luck. He makes sure each and every packet of Vegetarian Noodles leaving this stall has exactly the same number of items placed in exactly the same position.
I enjoyed watching him deliberately put each item in: Brown Swirly Gluten Thing, Fake Char Siew Pork, Pseudo Tofu, Cabbage and French Beans, Crispy Tofu Skin, Additional Unknown Crispy Thing (not on camera).
Does Performance Art taste good?
You betcha.
These days, I feel like a stranger in my own country, whichever that may be. Here, there, anywhere.
What brings this feeling home for me besides the sheer crowds and unfamiliar buildings in this tropical city-state is witnessing how my fellow Singaporeans treat another human being – their maid.
I am so ashamed at what I’ve seen in less than 24 hours since arriving that I wish I walked up to some of these people and said, “Wake up your ideas, people! You give Singaporeans a bad name! No, scratch that. You give humans a bad name!”
So here it is, my open letter to every one who has a maid in Singapore.
Dear Maid Employer,
Please speak to her as a peer. Don’t give me that bullshit about “training” them. They are not stupid. They are not your pets. It is easier to engender loyalty and performance when you teach as you want to learn.
You know, it’s not going to hurt your manicure if you carry your own shit once in a while. Yes, I’m talking to you, Lady Walking 10 Paces Ahead of Your Maid, who is carrying your shopping bags, your diaper bag, and your kid’s stroller. Being a parent doesn’t mean you just mind your kid. Be responsible for you and your kid’s crap.
Speaking of kids, you are your children’s living examples. If you make another person do everything for you, what does your kid learn? Sadly, your kid will turn out to be that 13-year-old boy I saw on the bus, handing off his bag, his books, his crap to his maid as they got off the bus. Has your child ever carried anything in his life? For Chrissakes, he’s a frigging teenager (who apparently needs a maid chaperone when he goes for some enrichment class or other).
What is that tone and sour face when you “give your command?” Is that how you want your boss to talk to you? Fine. The woman works for you. You give her a whooping $300 a month for indentured servitude. Don’t, for one second, think your “order” is any better received or understood when it’s given with a raised nose, curled lip, and hissed words. That looks ugly on you.
I am sick of hearing how $300 or $400 is so much money in their currency. Really? Then shouldn’t all those expat Singaporeans earning pounds, Euros, or dollars expect to revise their salaries to meet Singapore standards? It only seems fair to me. What kind of fucked-up logic is that? Oh, sorry, I forget you are not remitting money to your rural village. PEOPLE, THAT IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO NOT GIVE A LIVING WAGE.
Try having one day off a month.
While you’re at it, try leaving your families, loved ones, kids, at home while you move to a foreign country to work and live in a new culture for years at a time. How much would you like to be paid for your effort?
Respect. You will be surprised how that gets paid back in spades.
Don’t feel like you need to fill up her days with random shit to do because, according to your expert calculations, she is at home for hours doing “nothing” each day. Sure! Then let me come by your office and give you extra work every time I see you goofing off at the water cooler, having a long lunch, or watching Internet porn.
Oh, and by the way, housework, kid-minding, elderly-minding, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, is not nothing. You think that’s easy? Try doing it for a change. Oh right. You’ve got people for that.
And a special last word to that woman I saw in town today who handed off an item to be placed in her kid’s stroller. She handed it off to her maid who then put it in the stroller. She was the same distance from the stroller as the maid was. What I mean to say is, she could have simply placed the item in the stroller herself. But she didn’t. She didn’t even think about it, or say thanks. It was as automatic an action as breathing.
I don’t get that.
We may have our architectural gems, world-class airports, a thriving economy, kickass hawker foods, and blah blah blah. But for some of us, I don’t think we have achieved common decency just yet.
- Rant Over –
In my countrymen’s defence, I spied a family with two young toddlers and their maid chatting and having a meal in Chin Chin Restaurant. They were laughing at some joke. Note the maid wasn’t chasing the kids or feeding them first before she could have her meal. They were eating together, at the same time. The maid was smiling and geniunely looked happy.
She was the only one I saw today with a smile on her face.
Some person ahead of me in line at Starbucks ordered a Venti Vanilla Latte Non-Fat No Foam 180 Degree something or the other.
She lost me after No Foam.
I probably got half of her order wrong, but you get the idea.
Seriously, people?
Does anyone drink coffee anymore?
I felt so plain ordering my Tall Iced Latte.
Maybe I should have thrown in Non-Fat or 2 Percent, just to make the barista really earn that minimum wage.
Look, Mom! No hands!
I just heard a radio program on summer soups. (Okay, for the uninitiated, there’s SUMMER soup, and there’s REST OF THE YEAR soup.) Summer is hot, ergo you drink cold soup. Winter is cold, ergo you drink hot soup.
Now, for a girl from the tropics, the idea of cold soup is as appetizing as melted ice-cream. It’s the same thing, if you ask me. For Singaporeans, and I assume, many others in non-seasonal places, hot soups are a daily – and delicious – reality of life.
I remember how flabbergasted Jay was on his first visit to Singapore. Aside from being overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells, he couldn’t understand how we could eat hot spicy food in the middle of 100-degree humidity.
It’s funny how you never really consider something you do every day, your whole life, until someone looks at it from a different perspective.
We’re used to what we’re used to, until we’re not.
Still, there are some mysteries I cannot fathom.
Don’t come and bluff me with this “Suckling Pig.” Lola, I’m talking to you. When Chris visited Seattle with her family, we made a dinner date at the restaurant and eagerly anticipated “Suckling Pig” as advertised on its menu. After the waitress described the dish, we were sorely disappointed. She lamely told us there was crispy pork rinds. Stewed pork with some skin thrown on as an afterthought isn’t suckling pig. Am I being too harsh if I want them to get it right?
I am constantly tickled whenever I encounter “Singapore” dishes. I’ve seen “Singapore Noodles” in almost every US city, but this was the first time I saw “Singapore Chicken.” Depending on who you believe at the Vashon Island restaurant – run by Hong Kongers – the chicken was either in some brown sauce, or curry sauce, or brown curry sauce. If there was any Singapore dish that deserved a national title, it would have to be Char Kway Teow.
I still have mixed feelings about sandwiches, especially cold sandwiches. We made these Cream Cheese Salmon sandwiches for Ruby’s second birthday this year, in addition to Cream Cheese Cucumber and Nutella Apple sandwiches. I have not had as much cream cheese as I’ve had since moving to the US. They eat a lot of sandwiches here. I guess a sandwich is like a bowl of noodles. Only to me, it’s still not really.
As a result of our schizophrenic diet, Ruby has developed a rather unique palate. She loves cream cheese, pickles, fish balls, sushi, noodles, and char siew; but does not like mac and cheese, tofu, eggs, sandwiches, or pasta (cold or hot). I can safely say she is the only one in her preschool to pack rice or noodles in her lunchbox instead of sandwiches.
What does this mean for our family?
Grocery runs to two kinds of supermarkets to get both Western and Asian ingredients. A kitchen where you can find instant noodles and salsa. Dinners where Jay makes a sandwich, and I make a bowl of noodles.
Because when you’ve got to eat soup noodles, you’ve got to eat soup noodles.
I don’t believe in any of the homes I read about in interior magazines, architectural magazines, or design magazines. Or, for that matter, any “Habitat Profiles” in newspapers.
You know why?
NO ONE LIVES IN THOSE HOMES!
There is no way that people live without stuff lying around, without a dustball in sight, without a shred of human evidence! I think there’s a conspiracy. The home owners have TWO houses – one for the glossy magazine shoot, and one they actually live in.
It is not accurate to show a home devoid of the very basic thing that makes it a home – life.
So I’ve decided that it’s only fair I show you an honest-to-goodness lived-in 700-sq-ft bungalow house occupied by two adults and one toddler.
When you enter our home, you will most likely trip over a shoe or two. Sorry about that.
Next, your eyes will immediately be assaulted by Jay’s and my workstations on our former dining table. We used to try to eat on the end not occupied by our computers, but as a casualty of day-to-day living, we’ve transformed that usable space into a dumping ground for whatever we’re doing at any time of the day, or whatever we happen to be carrying as we walk through our front door. For the record, this drives Jay crazy.
Look left and what was once our living room is now merely referred to as “Ruby’s Play Area.” It is not a pretty sight. A clean living room lasts about 10 seconds, the amount of time it takes Ruby to run into her room and pick out a new toy to play with.
This is Ruby’s Big Girl Bed. Not bad, you think, until you see…
…this. Her closet.
Our kitchen is the size of many of your bathrooms. (This is no excuse, but I wanted to point that out.) Yes, the counter is full of crap. Yes, Ruby has many toys. Yes, I eat a lot of cookies, and there is no room to open that microwave door. Yes, those are dirty dishes and I sometimes wish I had a dishwasher.
This narrow passageway to our backdoor serves as a mini laundry room. Jay’s piece de resistance of organization is right here. Boxes and boxes meticulously labeled, with random objects such as stamps, hair clips, tape, etc, all nicely squared away.
There is always unwashed laundry in my house. If you open that dryer, there is probably a load of unfolded laundry. Clothes happen. Those fancy schmancy homes? They have housekeepers. Or maybe they don’t change clothes. As a G-rated blog, I’ve made one edit. You don’t need to know I have something personal drying on that rack.
There is soap scum on my shower curtain. Don’t hate.
This is part of my floor. Duct tape is the answer to everything.
You’re probably thinking, “How in blazes do they live like that?” right after you think, “Damn, that Dot sure is one messy person!”*
Look, I’m just being honest here. If no one was visiting, this is what my home looks like 90 percent of the time. I’m betting there are others out there whose homes look a little like mine. So ‘fess up.
This is a real home. Shouldn’t there be a magazine catering to readers like me who appreciate a neighborly snoop into other people’s homes? We can call it “Surprise Habitat Profile.” I don’t care if you have unfinished laundry on top of that high-end Samsung washing machine or your kid’s naked doll and all her accessories are sprawled on your Eames lounge chair.
Because that’s the truth.
Don’t let your $80-an-hour housekeeper tell you otherwise.
*Please note that this is mostly Dot’s doing. Jay tries very hard to keep this place clean but he’s up against the tsunami of messiness that is me and Ruby.
She now knows what cotton candy is.
I don’t remember my first time either, but let me just say that Ruby immediately sensed it was something good (read: bad for you), begged me to open it as quickly as I could, and did not talk to me for five minutes.
Why didn’t she think it was a toy?
We are in trouble. Not only is Ruby a natural chatterbox, she’s also just two. At this rate, we will need a third iPhone and the maximum AT&T family data plan before she’s seven.
Don’t give her your number.
Hi Jackie, you are at home? We are at home. I bought some groceries and watermelon. I bought some liquors. I bought my floss. It’s be a circle. Look at this. We are making a call for them to come. But I don’t like the booty at the grocery store but the managers give me a whole box of chocolate bars.
* In case you are wondering, the two giant watermelons and case of hard liquor were for friends coming over.
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