Very hot, and very sweaty, our last few days in Singapore, but there were adventures yet to be had in the shade of the shophouses’ five-foot ways. We headed to Kampong Glam one morning, me and Mowmy and CC and the kid, before the sun reached its full burny power. I know that Glam, pronounced glahm, comes from the gelam tree that once grew in this colonial-era Malay enclave, but this does not stop me from expecting the high life and bejewelled transvestites whenever I venture into the neighbourhood.



We wandered down Kandahar Street to Bussorah Mall, where, in the shadow of the golden-domed Sultan Mosque, the Malay shopkeepers played bird-call whistles to enchant the kid. We admired the Peranakan bowls and teapots for sale at the Little Shophouse, and, some doors down, smoothed our palms on pink and green sarongs hanging from the eaves. On Arab Street the cloth traders called us into the cool of their shops, to their draped saris, to their printed Indian cottons and piles of neatly folded sheets.



’Round midday down Haji Lane, the nighttime bars and slouchy after-hours hangouts were shuttered, still. At noon the shishas had yet to be lit.

On the seventh day of the lunar new year, I found myself in front of the Kuan Yim Temple on Waterloo Street, with the aunties in their wide straw hats selling blushing lotuses in red and pink. The air was tinged with the burning of ashy-tipped joss sticks, a perfume sharp and soft and familiar all at once. Inside, the great hall chattered as the devout kneeled in front of the Kuan Yin statue and shook containers of bamboo fortune-telling sticks. I was tempted – I am always tempted – to give it a go, but I fear I will not know what to do with the information.

I moseyed along to Sim Lim Square, instead, where I knew fate held for me a new digital camera. “I want to go back to the Kuan Yim temple later,” I said to Mowmy while the Song Brothers shop uncle wrote me a bill, and there must have been something in my voice the good man mistook for piety. “I give you special price,” he said, looking up. “Screen protector and extra battery,” he said, and here he tapped invitingly on the no-name battery he placed on the glass countertop. He wordlessly typed the figure 20 into his calculator and spun the display round to me. “No need lah, uncle, no need, no need,” I said, for I wanted neither an extra battery nor to take advantage of ill-gotten gains by name-dropping the goddess of mercy.

By late afternoon most of the flower-sellers in front of the temple had packed up their carts, though the ice-cream-sandwich man was running a busy trade among the hanging chrysanthemum garlands. My mother practices her own brand of Buddhist Catholicism, but she lit a pair of joss sticks all the same, and raised them to the sky. She was one among the crowd still milling, praying, hoping.

Curries, curries, everywhere, but the pratha tastes like it’s for hippies. The feasting’s well and truly begun, with the lazy Susan at home heavy – constantly – with dishes of food. We are like the prodigal daughters come home, CC and me, and it is just as well there is no older son glowering in the background. There were curries galore last night, veg curry and dhal curry and chicken curry, and beef curry spicy enough to make you stop talking. Even with Mowmy’s twelve-grain wholemeal pratha – (This is a woman, a medical doctor, who said, when three-year-old Maeve offered her a Pez, “No, thank you, Poco, candy rots your teeth.” The kid blinked.) – it was a meal to make you wipe your plate clean.



There is so much green here. My mother’s garden bursts with shades of moss and grass and leaves light and dark, while in the streets bird’s nest ferns grow, full and lush, in the crooks of the wide, spreading raintrees.

There were globe lanterns hanging from the trees tonight at Dempsey Hill Green. A nineteenth-century nutmeg plantation, the site was eventually cleared and converted, after the nutmeg blight of the late 1850s, for army use. The barracks’ long, low buildings stay, today, and the lights of their fancy restaurants spill invitingly over the slope. Tonight, the air was laced with the perfume of frangipani blooms. It is a seductive scent, the kind of fragrance that lures young men into the thick of tropical greenery, certain they glimpse the back of a lithe, long-haired woman just beyond the trees.

We were one girl, first, waving madly, then two, then – falling into the chair – three, and very hungry, at the RedDot. “What,” we asked the waiter and pointed at the menu, “is a ‘Pompin Potato’?” “It is, um, potato,” he said, and here gestured to his general left in front of him, “and cheese,” gesturing right. “Yah,” he said into the silence, confirming himself. Then: “Not too sure.” We were fed, nonetheless and eventually, and it was fine, kind of meh but fine, but more importantly we were left to natter while the black ceiling fans whirred in the wood-framed ceiling. Life runs away with us on different sides of the world, but in one evening with the lanterns hanging from the trees, the stories are shared and the days fall away.

I grew up here, with the coconut trees in the front garden. Mornings, there is a bird who calls cu-cu-cruu.

We are sticky all the time. Our necks are sticky. The insides of our elbows are sticky. I grew up sticky all the time. Schoolchildren in Singapore have a smell about them – not a bad smell, just a particular one – that is a combination of humidity and stickiness, canvas shoes and concrete floors. There is a respite from the heat only when the rain comes, and at night, when the lizards click and buzz outside.



There is respite, too, in a cold, eighty-cent glass of soybean milk from the drinks auntie at no. 34. We escaped into the Maxwell Road hawker centre this afternoon, Mowmy and me, and sat in the shaded cool for noodles and soups. We were in full view of the you char kway stall, where one uncle rolled the long strand of dough and folded it in half, one uncle deep-fried the pastry, and one auntie fished for the golden you char kway and drained it on paper towels. Two stalls down, the biscuit uncle did a fine trade in knotted plastic bags of butter biscuits.

Two sisters married two brothers; then there was the war. B-29s flying overhead, and the Japanese soldiers took a man away for laughing too loudly. There was a house on a hill; a firecracker tied to a chicken; and nine diamonds and a jade droplet sold to bribe a friend out of jail.

My grandmother was telling stories today. We were eating sweet, crunchy persimmons after lunch. It was hot, and the birds were calling to each other in the garden.

Tonight I leave again.

I have been meeting all sorts of interesting people this visit, partly because of party season upon us like the monsoonal snow falling outside Tanglin Mall. Beyond the photographer all in white and the silent partner in an English antiquarian bookshop, there was Wendy, a printmaker who wore a wig, and who will start an art gallery by the time she’s forty; and not one, not two, but THREE people with whom to gossip about the Straits Times. PLEASE, you cannot expect that I am going to pass on this gossip on my blog. First of all, I only spread gossip about me. And (b), I may sneer at the local paper from time to time, but I may also need a job with the hometown media some day. Heh. Bow, scrape.

There was also the young man at Ren’s party, about whom Ren said: “You have to get to know Charles, because he works at Louis Vuitton.” “But Ren,” I said, “I have moved on from Louis Vuitton. These days we like Channel.” And here I made my thumbs and index fingers form the luxxe logo of the double C’s.

But, so, with the meeting of people. Just the other day in London, I was telling Andrea and Danny about the time I saw a yellow cab down Monmouth Street. I know this seems like I’ve taken a left down Tangent Lane, but stay with me. I’d seen it out of the corner of my eye, and hadn’t thought it peculiar in the least—and then a couple of seconds later realised I was in the wrong city for a yellow cab. I moseyed down the street to gawk, and it turned out—“Quiet on the set!” and all—they were shooting a New York movie. “I wanted to ask what they were filming,” I said, “but I was shy.” “NO,” Danny said, and he is English, so he didn’t have to try very hard to sound wry, or sarcastic, or a little bit of both. “But I am!” I said, because I am. No, I am!

Still, I think I generally know how to talk to people, even though it takes me a little bit to get into it. But then there was the guy I met last week who works for Société Générale. “Oh,” I said, when he told me this. Then: “Um.” Then: “Is that...something...with...finance...something?” You cannot say I have not been to conversation camp. Actually, yes, yes, you can, and quite loudly too. They are showing the trailers for “Memoirs of a Geisha” in the cinemas these days, and there’s this one bit where they tell Zhang Ziyi that geisha training involves learning about the fine art of conversation. Best sign me up, Scotty-san!

Went to the temple with my grandmother the other day. I like the incense smell of temples, and the joss sticks dissolving upwards into smoky swirls. The priest—round face and saffron robe—sprinkled holy water on us with a stalk of plump chrysanthemums, then we burned lotus-flower candles and laid them at the feet of the giant golden Buddha statue. Enlightenment radiated from his head in animated neon lines.

I don’t know her very well, my grandmother, but I like it when she talks about her ah ba and ah ma. She was telling, that morning, about how her mother used to scent the homemade fermented-rice face wash with flowers.

This morning in the local NTUC, I realised they had wasted no time replacing the Christmas soundtrack with the Chinese New Year one. Following which, my mum bought ten pineapples from the fruit uncle at the wet market—ten fat, fragrant pineapples; golden, and golden, and with tips that end in pink—which means the countdown really has begun.

There was that first day of arrival, where, head swimming with international travel and lack of sleep, I lay in bed and, full of confidence, (delusion? Confidence? Sometimes I get mixed up), made a tea date for later in the afternoon. “It’s ten now, right?” I’d said, and I wasn’t even slurring my words yet. “So if we meet at three that’ll give me plenty of time to take a little nap.”

Who knows if the alarm hadn’t gone off, or it had and I’d just folded it into my dreams—but all of a sudden I was rolling over and, reaching for my mobile still showing the English hour, trying to calculate local time. “Seven-twenty-one, so that’s eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, one, two, 3:21.” I said, aloud, and using fingers. Then: “No, wait, wrong, surely. Seven-twenty-two, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, one, two, 3:20—shit.” And then it was time to get on the phone with Tym and apologise furiously—well, as furiously as groggy would let me.

We met, finally, an hour later than planned, and proceeded to eat as much cake as was necessary to reach satisfaction. That number is not so high as it could have been, really, for try number one was the key lime pie (not technically a cake), and try number two, which was all it took, was the chocolate rum raisin. This second one was surprising because there were bits that were chocolatey and bits that were rum-raisiny, but not really bits that were both.

I’d been wanting to take the girl out anyway to celebrate her quitting of job, but then my extreme lateness overruled, and I had to reach for the check, mumbling, “This is the Treat of Shame.”

So. There was that day—and that night, where I fell asleep in my chair then fell asleep on top of the covers before giving up entirely and getting into bed proper—

there was that day, and it seems so long ago now; but ask me what I’ve been up to and Lord help us all if I can tell you. There’ve been martinis and steak sandwiches at Morton’s, that much I remember—something like eleven lychee martinis at the table, and a mint julep for me. There was a late-night dinner at Makansutra, all of us picking the oysters out of the oyster omelette. “I hope no one notices,” I’d said, as my chopsticks did their trick, “that I’m picking the oysters out of this oh lua.” “Sorry,” I’d said, but I wasn’t, not really. And then the confessions came chiming in, and we sat around wondering who it is who does eat the oysters. There was a traipse ’round Little India after yellow rice and banana-leaf curries, a tour of the glory of Mustafa’s food department (ten-cent chocolate wafers! bags of murukku! fake Kinder eggs! Durian brand tea dust!), and then sweet iced Milos outdoors under the whirring fans while the monsoon rain made it all new again.

Yesterday morning, quite early, there was my own private radio show; then last night, very late, there was the Haig Road apartment and its tiled floor in a modular sixties pattern, blue, blue, white; and a bag of Ruffles passed around, with “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin” projected on the roll-up, roll-down photo-shoot backdrop. There was the cab ride home closing in on three in the morning, and creeping into the house like I have mice for feet.

I don’t know what clock I’m operating on these days—take your pick from Singapore, London or Paris—but I was in my pyjamas till five this afternoon, and, I tell you, it felt good the WHOLE time.

Seven a.m. and outside the colours are waking up too, soft still, melting into each other still, like one of those faded old photographs with the rounded corners.

There are surprises still to be had.

Red in the evening air, floating like breathing, fine like the fairy wings of dragonflies. And the scent of the sea on the breeze. And the city in lights across Marina Bay.

On Keong Siak Road, in a white hotel with a curving staircase, green-gold tiles just bigger than my thumbnail, and mirrors unto mirrors like a dream.

Lotus-flower candles and a makeshift altar on terracotta tiles.

A lychee Bellini in a chocolate booth.

Here, I have been living unawares.

Downtown at lunch hour, the office girls in button-down shirts and slim-cut skirts each carry a wallet and a packet of tissues.

We are girls who will travel for lunch, me and Ren and Jacq, even if two of us don’t know the roads and one of us can’t drive. Ren is picking her Amazing Race companion contestant, and I fear it will be neither me nor Jacq, because Jacq’s idea of directions is, “Smith Street, Smith Street. Food Street lah. Chinatown. Near the multistorey carpark. Chinatown,” while me, I trip down Temple Street in pink heels, hopping on one foot, trying to deal with disobedient insoles.

Look. I don’t normally put up with uncomfortable shoes, I don’t have time for that drama. But this is my sad shoe story. For the last couple of months, I have been living in a pair of pink wedge heels. These are amazing shoes. Girls like them. Boys like them. I put on the shoes the day I got them, and have walked and run and skipped and jumped in them ever since. We’re at the point now where the leather’s scuffed in places, and stretched so that my foot slides forward toward the toe, in effect making the shoe a size or so too big in the back. I got a pair of insoles the other day to save these shoes from the bin, but what eventually happened was that my feet continued to slide forward, and then the insoles made the slide-forward fit tighter, so that then I got blisters from the chafing. If ever there were an instance of kena bang, this is it. Anyway, whatever. As of yesterday’s purchase from the emergency shoe department, I have new shoes. A pair of heels to replace a pair of heels. In the unexpected choice of purple. I’m not sure that I do purple. Only one way to find out...

But,

so.



Yesterday afternoon we found our way to Chinatown, somehow, away from the bankers in grey and black, to the scent of medicinal herbs in the air; to the giant goldfish kite flying red against the blue sky and the jumble of gaily painted shophouses; to the woven bins of round durians and the dollar baskets of mangosteens, of starfruit, of jambu a blushing pink plump; to dim sum and claypot tofu for hungry girls.



Oh but we heart Chinatown, where, down Temple Street, the cool interior of Jing Jing Dessert House offers a hundred and one desserts, including such variations on a theme as black sesame cream, black sesame cream with rice dumplings, and black sesame and walnut cream—and where our post-lunch “coffee” turned into durian pudding, soursop jelly quivering with soursop delight, and the mango ice special, full of refreshing mango goodness.



Outside, on a too-hot afternoon, a girl smiled from just inside the five-foot way, while shopkeepers fanned themselves in the shade of striped awnings.

Girls catch up over lunch, is what we do. Once upon a time we were all in blue pinafores in the same place at the same time; and all of a sudden, some twelve years later, over noodle soups at Madam Saigon, we are New York and London and Singapore, me and Henny and Andrea, a King Chiku shake and a lime-mint ice blended and a sour plum drink.

It’s like Jacq said the other night, after dinner at Da Paolo, where the chef—hello, dark eyes and stubble—kept looking over and smiling. We like boys, what can you do. Oh, Da Paolo Pizza Bar, everyone don’t waste time and go there immediately. The ceiling is furry with cowhide, and the bottles of Aranciata are lined up at the ready. There is pizza with smoked salmon and pesto, and pizza with ham and little mushrooms, and pizza with mascarpone and truffles. And when the waiterman comes by after to ask if you are interested in dessert, you can, if there are six of you, say, as Ren did, “We’ll take one of everything except the ice cream.” Among the chocolate cake and the profiteroles and the mousse, the lemon meringue tart—a thin layer of tart topped with maybe eight centimetres of cream, browned just so—is that kind of good that, really, it might not be so bad to say, “We’ll take six lemon meringue tarts.”

Hummm. You see what we have been up to, out here.

But.

I was trying to say,

sometime after one in the morning, after dinner at Da Paolo, (after the chef, the pizza, the lemon meringue tart), after sitting around at Jessica’s sister’s place with horoscopes and too many fashion magazines, I was walking Jacq back to her apartment while she walked me to a cab, and, a propos of nothing, she said, “Life is funny lah.”

And the thing is, it is.

It has come to this. Two weeks and some at home, and what is going on is, late Sunday morning, I’m just done with a snack of goat’s milk yoghurt with honey and gem biscuits, and CC and I collapse into soft white clouds of sofa.

“I’m lazy,” she said, “so I’m going to throw all these toys at you.” She reached toward the collection of the kid’s playthings on the living room table, and, because she is kind, precised: “I’ll start with the soft ones.” A bumblebee flew across the table at me, then a monkey, a bear, a flower-print dog.

It smelled like rain outside.



At 8:49 Thursday night I snuck a peek at Tym’s watch and said, “Oh, we have overstayed our parking by almost an hour.” It is easy to do, you see, when you have CC and Tym and Terz and a nasi padang feast in front of you.

Thursday night on Liang Seah Street was: sitting outside on the five-foot way, yellow rice and pink iced bandungs all around, while the rattan fans spun above our heads; and then, just down the block, Ah Chew’s Desserts for bowls of black sesame cream and pulot hitam, and discussions of noodles.

There is a noodle hierarchy, you may say you like them all equally as if they are your children, but everyone knows the truth is, one noodle is better than the others. Me, I like mee poh, followed by mee sua. I also like the classic yellow Hokkien mee noodle, and I will say this, unabashed, and in writing, even though Tym is terribly disparaging of it. Also, tang hoon, which has been working its way up the ranks over the years, gets a special mention for its thin strands of slippery glassiness, and for its transparent, crystal-ball aspect of mystery noodle.

Later, Terz was explaining the workings of KTV bars, the seductions of KTV hostesses. “They come over and whisper in your ear,” he said. “What do you mean, ‘They whisper’?” I said, because I am naïve to the shadows of Singapore nightlife—the China girls and Geylang trannie prostitutes. “What do they whisper? Like, ‘What’s your favorite noodle?’”

Oh, but that was a tasty night, well worth the ten-dollar parking violation ticket we found later on the windscreen, timed 8:49.



And I remember now that I keep forgetting to blog about waking up at seven two Sundays ago for a porridge breakfast. Seven on a Sunday morning, now that is dedication to porridge.

Sunday morning in Tiong Bahru, early-like, there is fish porridge, hot and salty, and pork porridge, also good, but watch out for the livery bits.



And the porridge was fine, but the murtabak, well, that was somethin’ special.

Too early on a Sunday morning, the murtabak uncle hasn’t prepared the mutton yet, but offers the sardine with a smile. The boy at the stove slaps the dough onto the counter and fries it up on the spot.



Kopis and tehs for the table, while, just beyond the low blocks of HDB flats, the sun is rising.

Friday afternoon in Holland Village, down the street with the red tin mailboxes, there were pistachio and strawberry mint gelati for a hot day.

At home, after, the mynah birds called in the garden. “Your bed is comfy,” CC said, lying down. “I know,” I said, “so stay.” “I will,” she said, and closed her eyes. Me, too, I stretched out on the cold white tiles of my bedroom floor, and Satie sounded like the afternoon standing still while the fan whirred back and forth.

There is a dress I have been admiring in a store window for days now, every time CC and I go downtown. Today Ren called just after noon and asked where I was. “I’m going to be late,” I said, “but I have a new dress.” What can you do, sometimes a slight tardiness is inevitable if it is good for your fashion.

Over Killiney coffees, later, Jacq and I were talking about Shanghai and New York and London: this is our lives, the possibilities of our lives. Jacq is nimble like a little Chinese seamstress, and when I looked at her hands, I found she had made a small crane out of Morinaga chocolate wrappers.

There is nothing like a thick porcelain cup of kopi, complete with the plastic soup spoon of condensed milk. I don’t know what it is about coffee here, I can’t imagine it’s just the condensed milk that makes the difference, but, man, it’s good and thick and sweet in a way that makes you forget the skim cappuccinos and the double macchiatos. “It’s the way they roast the beans,” Jacq said. “They roast them in butter.”

We were on the dock at the Yacht Club tonight, me and the baby, and her eyes were wide at the big pink cloud in the deep blue sky, the boats bobbing up and down, and the world, the world, the world.

I found out that my mother, behind my back, is going about saying that I am “very competent.” Chinese mothers, what can you do. They grip the door and twitch toward an imaginary brake pedal when you drive, but then you discover from your sources (hello, CC) that really, they think you handle yourself rather well. The point is that all of a sudden I think I can drive in Singapore.

Which is why we are getting very used to this car thing, me and CC, which means that if we have a Sunday morning roti prata date on Upper Bukit Timah Road opposite Beauty World (cha-cha-cha), it is not only on, it is set, and it is confirm. We scam the keys from Mowmy, pack Tym up front for directions, and off we go toward two tables of food, I swear this is true. At Al-Azhar, we were three girls with one still to come, and the waiter boys brought one paper dosai, two plain pratas, two egg pratas, an ice cream prata, two Godzillas and a teh tarik, and all accompanying curries and chutneys, and it took up our table and then some. When Jacq got there, we said, “Don’t be shy, don’t be shy,” and surely she is not shy, this one, so then there were also teh halia kurang manis and a tissue prata, and oily hands all around.



Girls at a Sunday morning prata breakfast natter about multilingual chat rooms for lonely local men, about the state of writing in Singapore, about the possibility of a girl returning home. Oh, it might not be so bad if I had to move back here. I wouldn’t have to scheme and plan and wrangle my way into one more bloody foreign visa, for one. Coming back here would be so easy, is the thing, and it’d be tasty, too. And maybe I’d buy an old shophouse and do it up sweet, with a poured concrete goldfish pond in the inside courtyard, and giant chrysanthemums floating on the pool of sparkle water. I’d have a magnolia tree outside, the large waxy leaves hung low, and the sweetly dizzying scent of pink blooms. There’d be the fat ants crawling in a lazy trail on the cool bathroom tiles, or a furry caterpillar dropping in for a nighttime visit. There’d be the great crackling thunderstorms, and then, after, the smell of lush grass, and rain, and the tropics. And at night the sky’d be the same as it is in London, in Brooklyn, in Paris.

Girls after a Sunday morning prata breakfast are full of drive power, and motor about the city because they can. “Mowmy,” I texted, “we have stolen your car and we are going to Holland Village.”

The baby was asleep and Mowmy was making soon kways in the kitchen and we were sitting about at dinner and I must have thought about six times “If only there were ice creams in the freezer, it has been that kind of day” when CC said, “Maybe after dinner we need to take a walk to Bishan and get mochis.”

“Yes,” I said, “yes, yes, yes.”

(If you are going to share a brain with someone, it is very nice if that someone is CC.)

We walked arm-in-arm to the local mall, big sister and little sister. The night was cool after midday thunderstorms, and the lizards click-click-clicked in the spotlight of orange streetlamps.

CC and I hit up our mum for her car keys this morning and drove to the U.K. visa application office, which is to say that CC navigated and I drove, while Mowmy waved us off, saying: “Take Marymount straight, bear left to Braddell Road, get on the CTE in the direction of Jurong AYE.” What? What?!

All my driving experience has been on the other side of the street on the other side of the world. I can figure out how to get just about anywhere in Singapore on the public transportation system, but I have driven in this city maybe once. This one!-time!-only! affair took place sometime back in 1996 or 1997. I’d just gotten my driver’s license in America, and was back for the school holidays. I thought I’d take the car for a whirl round the neighborhood—really, just down the street and back. My mum came along, gripping the passenger-side door while I tried to re-orient myself to driving on the left side of the street. Every time I hugged the curb, she twitched. I never drove in Singapore again, but I am very good at swiping my transit card through the turnstiles.

This morning, the dual-track running commentary in Mowmy’s Renault was like so: “Wait, AYE? What? There is no sign for the AYE. It says CTE, PIE, BKE. Are we going north? No, wait, do we want to go to Bukit Timah? Eh? Exit on the left? Should we turn ar— oh, no, never mind. Eh, AYE! Wait, turn here? Um, um, sorry Mr. Lorry Man, I’m just going to edge my way in here, thank you thank you. Oh! We are going into the tunnel, yay!” When we got to the office on Robinson Road, CC said: “I can unclench my shoulders now.”

Two girls with their mother’s car and a full tank of petrol means we could have packed our passports and headed for Bangkok, but, instead, after the visa papers were handed in, we headed back to our neighborhood mall to guzzle sugary ice-blended coffee drinks and buy gem biscuits and laugh at plastic Japanese products.

There is a shop of wonderment on the top floor of Bishan Junction 8. Mu-Ee is a thing shop, a thing shop of wonderment, and these days everything seems to be ten percent off. Are you familiar with the thing shops of Singapore? Mu-Ee sells—among, like, eight thousand other things—Astroboy watches, packaging tape printed with grinning cartoon tigers, apple-print wallets, bunny-print wallets, and all kinds of knick-knacks and geegaws to hang off of your cellphone—an enamel Totoro, a cluster of multicolored baubles, a figurine that is at once a girl and a bell. If it were possible to hang a pork loin off of your cellphone, Mu-Ee would probably sell it.

The crowning glory of Mu-Ee is a canvas tote that is printed, front and center, with a drawing of a pig. Above the pig, large, cursive lettering reads: Spoony Spoon Spoon. Above this, there is a drawing of a cow and a compass point. The cow is maybe a third of the size of the pig—Spoony Spoon Spoon—and is accompanied by smaller cursive lettering that reads: the cow is further north.

You see what I mean? The world is full of amazing things.

It’s been a while since CC and I have been home at the same time, and it’s been never since CC and I and the kid have been home at the same time, so it has been family fun all day every day since I arrived last week.

There has been a trip to the beach at Sentosa, where the baby cooed at the peacocks and charmed even the pimply teenage boys who came up to play ball with her;

the Bishan pasar malam, where, just like at the best heartland night markets, the hawkers laid out fifty-cent underwear; aluminium made-in-China shaving kits; fishballs on sticks; small packets of boiled peanuts; cold sugarcane juice in plastic bags; and the glorious bounty of local fruits, I don’t know why my dear mother wastes her time with oranges and apples, common, common. The fruitsellers holler “One dollar one dollar one dollar” amid piles of longans, rambutans, duku langsats, and mangosteens, and then the durian uncle deftly pries a fruit open to announce: “Yellow!”;

clearing out old toy chests to find countless teddy bears, a Smurf the size of a four-year-old child, a panda dressed in plaid, and a China Monopoly boardgame complete with paper visas to Germany. One of the bears is the color of a butter cake, with arms long enough to wave above his head as if he were railing against the price of honey these days. His name is Bear-Bear. In the great tradition of Chinese-spoken English, “Bear-Bear” is pronounced: third tone, second tone. I’d hoped we’d find Lambie (third tone, second tone) too, but I think he must have perished in the soft-toy mold-a-thon. Mary’s little lamb went to school, but Lambie went on all family vacations. He was, at some point, lost in some European hotel and, subsequently, refound in the laundry. He’d been stitched up several times over the years, but my last memory of him still sees stuffing escaping through a small hole in the neck.



Altogether, down-home family time—where we shop for a bookshelf for upstairs and a shower hose for downstairs—is not necessarily making for a news revolution on this blog, but it is awfully nice, and the baby smells like sweetness.

Oh, blurgh. I’ve been up writing an earnest essay for the British High Commission explaining why I’m after a U.K. visa. It reads, in part:

I will admit to a particular weakness for the culinary arts—one of the guides for my proposed trip is a Saveur magazine article of substantial length on Devon’s cream teas, while another is the entire March 2005 issue of Gourmet, in which London is heralded as the newest hotspot of gastronomica—and volunteer that one of my primary propositions is to explore new English cooking.

I hope one does not find me flippant; I do not plan to spend the next two years in unadulterated gluttony.

CC came downstairs around midnight to see how I was going, which was especially sweet because she is the kind of girl who is generally early to bed and early to rise, whereas I potter about in the wee hours of the morning, and then fall asleep with a book face-down on my head.

She read the first draft, laughing at the right parts, then corrected all the American spellings to British ones. Ten years ago I had to pinch myself to remember to spell “defence” defense. Now I will have to tie a ribbon around my finger to remember that “realize” is once again realise.

To celebrate, we skipped to the kitchen, latenight lightfoot, to see what sorts of things might be in store for us. Half past midnight saw me and CC and our visiting cousin Jojo at the round rosewood dining table, three girls and three cakes, we are that sort of lucky.

We can’t help it, we are girls who like to eat, and try as I might—well, okay, I am not really trying—I cannot be one of these Singapore noodle girls, straight up and down.

Massive, shameless storm woke me up in the early hours of dark morning, all fat rain and big thunder and wicked lightning.

So the other day we wanted to throw a party, and Ren and I couldn’t find a place in which to throw one, ’cause we couldn’t find a house without parents (this is the point in the story at which Mowmy said, “Why do you need a house without parents for a party?” and I said, “Because we like to break things,” and she said, “Oh, have it here and break all my dishes so I can go buy new ones!”), and then I was like, Hello, clearly, the races. So then I unsuspectingly mention to my father that I want to throw a party at the races, and he’s all, Oh, do you want to go and look around and see about a party and be in the owner’s box?, let me call my friend. So already this thing is getting more and more unexpected by the moment. Anyway, the next day my dad says, So Doctor Tan is going to the track on Friday, you can go with. And I’m like, Um, wait, are you going? And dads is like, No, no, I’ll be out of town. Right. So, y’know, I’m thinking, Hang out with my dad’s friends all night? At the bloody races? I don’t think so. But then I think, Weeelll, so, but, why not. Because, sure, let’s try something new, and how hard can it be.

So come Friday, I’m all Ascot chic—black tank top, white skirt with black embroidery, green Campers to go with the turf. And it turns out Doctor Tan and this other dude, Omie, are totally into horses, Omie is from like horse-racing family in India, and we get to the Turf Club and it’s all Good evening, Doctor Omie, Hello, Hello, Hello, Nice to see you again, bow bow bow. And we head into a fancylike room with air conditioning and a dress code and waiters and wine and buffet tables of food. And these huge glass windows looking down onto the track. At one point Omie’s like, I’m going to try to get you to place a bet on the next race. And I’m like, You got it! Don’t take much to make this girl bet on a horse! So I put twenty down on Polanski to win or place (like, place first, second, or third), and then the horses are off, and then not only does Polanski not win, he also doesn’t come in second or third. And then he comes in last. Hello, gimpy. After that I reverted to my original plan of backing horses (mentally, anyway, there was no more money in the horse budget) based on the jockey’s outfits. Or the horse’s crazy name.

Eventually I also moseyed on downstairs to where the hoi polloi was hanging out, and that was very cool because downstairs means the men in shorts and short-sleeve button-downs perched on the aluminium banisters, punching their fists in the air as they cheer; downstairs means the jockeys in shiny get-ups, funny little birdlike men who must have hollow bones, more than one of whom has skin pulled tight on his narrow face; downstairs means the stands selling hotdogs and coffee and kaya toast; downstairs means you’re at street level, which is to say track level, which is to say horse level—which is to say downstairs means that the horses race right past you in the open air, close enough that you feel your mouth drop open when horse number seven comes up from the rear, running past one, two, three, four, five horses, and comes in a close second. Which is to say that even though it meant I was hanging out with my father’s friends for like six and a half hours on a Friday night, the horse races totally get an A-plus.

Sleepily, sleepily, in the car after a duck rice dinner at Buona Vista, the lull of the evening drive coming to a stop and me thinking we’re home. The unexpected treat is that we’re instead pulled up to a makeshift stand in a faint pool of neon in a Dempsey Road carpark. Said stand is piled high with durians, backed by a hand-painted sign of thick red letters: DURIAN DURI N. Really, who knew. Um, apparently everyone but me, because when I say to people, simply, “Durian, Dempsey Road,” they make noises and looks of happy recognition. So, okay, a fruit stand in an after-hours carpark. In no time at all, the uncle has set us up a small wooden table and is picking out durians for us, one sweet and one bitter. We sit on four filthy plastic chairs, with a newly opened box of O’Darling tissues, and empty paint buckets by our sides for seeds and husks. In the cool air, the portable power generator grinds and buzzes while a small television topped with its antenna V plays a Chinese melodrama. The black tarmac is shiny from rain all day.

What is nice is, you go into the kitchen to a little snacky, maybe a raisin bun spread with homemade apricot jam from Prades—

the story about the homemade apricot jam from Prades is, I was clearing and setting the table for dinner, and I got done and went into the big room all satisfied with myself, and Maud looked up from hanging out by the fireplace and said, “Did you throw out the apricot pits?” and I stood there, eyes darting left to right, thinking, What’s the right answer?? Because, okay, yes, but, um, I could fish them out of the trash, I mean, they’re sitting right on top. . . Anyway, who knew, apparently one likes to chop up the apricot pits and mix them in with the jam when it’s on the stove. Oh. Later, we used chopped almonds instead.

—but, so. What is nice is, you go in search of a little snacky, maybe a little gustatory memory of summer in the French countryside, and the kitchen is hot with not one but two pots on the stove, steaming not one but two lang chia kways—literally, rickshaw driver’s cake—sweet potato cakes studded with sweet raisins and candied melon. I cannot wait: a thick slice of springy lang chia kway, a curl of steam rising, margarine melting, and me with one leg up on the chair.

Christmas in Singapore. A morning walk in MacRitchie Reservoir Park, ochre clay underfoot, breeze rippling the surface of the green water. Lunch at Crystal Jade Kitchen in Junction 8—sliced fish porridge, roast duck and char siew, baby kai lan sauteed in garlic. Classic. Hobbit-esque second lunch at Andrea’s parents’ with pappadums and a variety of homemade curries, one tastier than the next. Then hanging out in the kitchen in Andrea’s Holland Village apartment, Norah Jones on the stereo, the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the air, watching the midafternoon rain come down outside the old-timey louvered windowpanes.