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I had an unpleasant incident yesterday. The day started off perfectly with my breakfast but something happened to me in afternoon that wasn’t that cool. I was deciding whether to post the incident in my good nature blog. I finally made the decision to do it because I am still a little bit childish I guess. I even took the time to write about the incident and email it to The Strait Times Singapore. I am quite certain that they will not publish it. At least I get to hone my writing skills. The incident does not change my perception about Singapore and I hope you guys will not generalize how most Singaporean behaves. Below is my email to the Strait Times Singapore.

My Email to Strait Times

Editor

I am a Malaysian Chinese who often spend my holidays in Singapore. I am a big supporter of Singapore and have always been fascinated with the growth of this tiny Island. Whenever I go abroad I would sometimes referred myself as Singaporean rather than Malaysian. For the record, my dad is born in Singapore but he chose to be a Malaysian when the two countries decided to part ways as he was working in Malaysia. My auntie and cousins are still Singapore citizens up till now.

While I am a big supporter of Singapore, some foreigners do have some complaint about the attitude of Singaporean towards migrant workers. I’ve always tried to defend the Singaporean and argued that is just some bad apples that are acting that way. However today I get to experience first hand while in Lucky Plaza.

We were all queuing up to withdraw some money from an ATM machine of POSB. Right opposite of the ATM machine is a remittance company. Initially I thought everybody was queuing up to send money and not for the ATM. I realized that the queue was for the ATM and quickly fall in line. After a few minutes, a Singapore guy did the same thing by not realizing that he was jumping queue. He was about 7 people in front of me and I pretended to ask the girl behind him if this is the line for ATM hopping to make him realize he was cutting the line. I sensed that he heard but pretended to not care as I caught him stealing a glance at me.

When the ATM was available, he casually walked to the ATM and made his withdrawal. He then proceeded to go to PNB and I am still waiting for my turn to withdraw my money. At that very moment I was deciding to let it slide or to confront him later. When it was my turn to withdraw money, I decided to satisfy my curiosity if the gentleman knew he cut the queue. This is Singapore and this couldn’t be happening as the gentleman appeared to be very cultured with his attire and I-phone.

So when I approached him in the bank, I just casually asked him if he knew he jumped cue. He answered no and wasn’t in an apologetic manner. I wasn’t expecting him to be apologetic  like most people do regardless first world or third world. I just said thank you and walked away as my curiosity was answered.

As I was walking out, he then said excuse me and I turned back. He then asked me this question, “If I were to tell you that I did it on purpose, what you are going to do about it?” I have to admit that the question threw me off. I was shocked and angry at the same time on how someone not being apologetic is able to ask such questions. I told him I can’t do anything if he were to answer me that way and I would most probably shake my head and walk away in disgust and mumble something to myself. I am no muscle head and never fought once in my life.

He then proceeded to ask me to “WAIT OUTSIDE” like to challenge me for a fight. I told him that I’m not going to fight him but if he insist that we must, I told him we fight over it at the police station. He then answered me we never involved police one with his Singlish. Then he told me that this is not Philippines and if in Singapore, one must be prepared to face the consequences if you confront somebody. I told him I am not from Philippines and that made me realize that what really ticked him was he couldn’t accept the idea of a migrant worker confronting him about his mistakes.

Finally the bank manager came to us and asked us to tone it down as we disturbing the customers of the bank. I immediately felt embarrassed for being selfish and did not care about the customers feeling at that time. I asked the Singapore gentleman if everything is cool now and he said yes. I just walked off but being human, I was really not satisfied with the outcome.

I really wanted to go back to the bank and asked him if I can see what are the consequences of confronting someone who did something wrong in Singapore. My intention was really to keep taunting him and asked him to go police station with me to show off his manly side. I would either succeed in humiliating him as I don’t think he will go to the police station with me or scenario number 2 would be he will give me a sucker punch out of agitation. I was hoping he would do the later as they are so many witnesses around. I’ll just take one for the team, in this case is team Philippines.

P/S : I hope with some good editing, this email can find it place somewhere in any media. I sincerely believe it is a good read and comical at the same time. If not, it served the purposed of venting out my anger and disgust.

Warmest regards,

Alex Goh

( Still have high regards of Singapore )

There you go guys, that was what happened to me. For those of you who are curious why I chose that title that I thanked God for being a coward. I would have landed myself in trouble with the authorities if I weren’t one. Let’s just say the Singapore dude got a face that is really inviting to give him “ONE TIGHT SLAP”.

It’s been a while since I made a post. From Manila, I went to Macau on the 19th August and stayed there for 5 days. Was invited to attend expo and I invited my parents to come hang out with me in Macau. My buddy Zach and Felix was also invited for the expo and all of us stayed in the same hotel. I will post about Macau the next few days.

Today I am posting about Singapore because I promised my brother ( from a different mother and father from Netherlands ) to show him what I am going to eat for breakfast. He has never visited Singapore but hopefully by next year June he will come visit Asia.

I love waking up early while I am in Singapore because of the food courts that is near my flat. The food court opens as early as 6am and there are approximately 100 individual stalls selling all sorts of foods. Not all of the stalls open at the same time but they are quite a handful are open to sell mostly breakfast meal. Singapore breakfast is “wild” according to most of my Caucasian buddies as the meals are heavy. I have to admit that the food is not as healthy as cereals and milk ( BORING!!! ) but no Singaporean has been reported dead while eating breakfast. The breakfast culture has been like this ever since and most of us are used to it.

While walking to the food court, I decided to snap some pictures of HDB flats of Singapore. Most Singaporean live in HDB and it is the cheapest form of housing in Singapore. Condos and landed property like houses cost a fortune. Since Singapore is a small island, high rise HDB are the best form of lodging.

It does look like a posh condo with all the trees

More HDB ahead and I’ m approaching the food court.

The early morning crowd in the food court near my flat. You can see the fish ball noodle soup stall is already open for business.

I walked around a bit to snap more pictures of the food court. Seen here is a Bah Kut Teh stall getting ready for business. I will write more about Bah Kut Teh in the future.

People lining up to buy their breakfast from this stall selling fried noodles.

Since I am a big fan of spicy food, I decided to patronize this stall that sells Curry Laksa ( noodles cooked in coconut and curry based soup ).

This is how Curry Laksa looks like. It has noodles, bean sprout, fish cake, fried tofu and cockles ( some sort of shell that is quite similar to clams ). This dish is not for those with a weak stomach. The soup is already spicy and yet we still have the chili dip for the cockles, fish cake and fried tofu. This cost me SGD2.00 ( aprox PHP64 ).

After the curry laksa, I went to a drink stall to get a drink. Opposite of the drink stall is another stall specializing in selling Yau Char Kwai ( fried dough ). The curry laksa is actually good enough for my breakfast meal but since my mouth is still itchy, I decided to order the fried dough to go along with my cold Soya bean. Talk about putting crazy calories in your body in the morning. I think if these food cut short my life to 5 years, so be it.

The drink stall and next to it is a fruit stall selling fresh food. Since I’m already super full, no fruits for me this morning.

So this is what I normally do in the morning while in Singapore. Tomorrow I will visit the food court again and I will get to choose on what to eat from the 80 stalls. Eating breakfast and read the morning newspaper is something I enjoy very much.

Last Saturday ( 7th August 2010 ), I decided to check out the World Food Expo that was being held at SMX Convention & World Trade Center. I got to know about this expo while surfing the Internet. I was pretty excited to visit the expo as I might get to see some latest food invention or something that might be new to me. The entrance fee was PHP100 and I gladly paid for it and found my way in to the exhibition area.

I have to say it wasn’t what I’ve expected but it was still all right for me to actually go stroll on a lazy Saturday afternoon. The expo was definitely targeted for the big players as most of the exhibits were selling machineries. Most of the machines that were displayed are for food processing and packaging. Also heavy duty kitchen stuff for industrial cooking. I have no idea what all the machines really do but I just continued strolling and gathering brochures. After spending like 2 hours walking around aimlessly, my legs got tired.

I was planning on going to MOA ( Mall of Asia ) as it is located quite near to WTC. But it was drizzling and getting a cab might be a biatch. As I walked out from the main entrance of the expo, I saw Wensha spa and suddenly decided to hang out there instead. Heard about it all the time from friends about the free shabu shabu and eat all you kinda deal. I’m not really a spa kinda guy as I prefer YOGA anyways. Click here to see my claim of being a Yoga dude.

I am glad that my heart told me to check out this spa as the visit to Wensha spa was actually the highlight of the day and not the trip to Food Expo like what my blog title suggested. Paid PHP600 for foot massage and was given a key to go in. The place was really packed with patrons and I can  see many families with their kids were enjoying the shabu shabu.

I quickly changed and went to the main area where food is being served buffet style. After eating I just rested a bit and then proceed to the foot massage area. Really cool lazy chairs with personal TV screen. After the food massage I just continued to lie lazily on the chair and just watched TV. I think I spent a total of 3 hours just lying on the chair. I managed to watch an episode of GLEE, some parts of Lethal Weapon 4 and a very cool documentary on China.

After enough of rest and TV watching, I decided to go for round 2 and go for the shabu shabu. Eating shabu shabu is nicer when you have a big group. I still got the employee of Wensha to set up the pot.

I have to say for PHP600, it is definitely a SUPER great deal. There are facilities like jacuzzi and sauna which I did not use that day, but I am sure spa fanatics will love this. Place is clean and really relaxing. I think the fact that I can hang out on the chair and watch TV for a few hours is already worth the price. Looks like I found a new place to hang out in Manila. Another good news is, Wensha sells San Miguel Light only at PHP40 per can.

Few of the Tagalog words that I learned when I first arrived in the Philippines was Pancit and pusit. Pancit is easy for me to remember as it goes with another word Canton. I speak Cantonese so the word Pancit Canton easily stick to my mind. The other word Pusit ( squid or calamari ) sounds like Pancit. Sometimes I do get it mixed up and ended up calling the must have Filipino birthdays dish Pusit Canton. My Pinoy friends would  laughed at me and corrected my blunder.

One time when I was in a Chinese restaurant in Malate, I saw this calamari dish on the menu called Calamari with Salt and Pepper. Suddenly I have a feeling that I will never forget the Tagalog word for calamari. I just put the words “Pusit Some More” together as it reminded me of a popular 90’s song by Salt and Pepper “Push It Some More”. I am sure those of you who are actively involved in the disco scenes in the 90’s are hearing the tune in your head now.

Few weeks ago, I made a dish named Begedel and it gave me an idea to use part of the concept for my stuffed calamari dish. So here are the steps on how I made my calamari dish and I shall name it “Pusit Some More”.

INGREDIENTS :-

• half kilo of calamari/squid – clean it throughout and remove the head and set aside
• one big potato – boil till soft
• one small carrot – chopped fine
• one onion – chopped fine
• 6 spoonful of multi purpose flour
• one big spoonful curry power
• one teaspoon turmeric powder
• salt and pepper
• 3/4 cup water
• one egg
• 2 sticks ( the type used for BBQ skewing )

INSTRUCTIONS :-

• Making the filling
• Boil the potato till soft and mash it
• add in chopped carrots and onion
• add salt and pepper and mixed will
• stuff the mixed potato filling into the body of the calamari. Make sure you stuff it real good by – Push It Some More ( I can’t resist…lol )
• one is properly stuffed, put the squid head on top and seal it with the stick ( refer to picture above ) and set aside
• Making the batter
• put flour in a bowl
• break an egg
• add in curry powder, turmeric and water and mixed well – make sure it is evenly mixed and thick
• Heat up oil for deep frying and soaked stuffed calamari in batter mixed
• Fry till crunchy and golden brown

The Filling – mash potato with carrot and onion

Batter mixed with turmeric and curry powder

Stuffed Calamari ready to be soaked into batter and fry

My Pusit Some More

The hardest part for me when making this dish was stuffing the filling into the slippery calamari. I have to admit that this is my first attempt in making this dish. The result was pretty good but I wouldn’t rate this as my best dish on first attempt. My batter wasn’t thick enough and it did not really coat the calamari as much as I would like it to. Maybe I should have dried the calamari by covering it with very thin layer of flour to make it dry. I am sure my second attempt would be better and I can get 3 different kind of texture from this dish. Crunchiness from the batter, spongy and rubbery from the calamari and soft and easy from the mash potato. The curry powder will give a very nice taste to this Pusit Some More dish.

I’ve been to China a couple of times but it was to the southern part of China, namely Guangzhou. Never been to Shanghai but always wanted to go because of some documentaries that I saw on TV. Back in the old days, Shanghai was a free port and a lot of foreigners can go in and out of China. Many foreigners made Shanghai as their permanent home and you can still see the influence in some of the buildings.

My younger brother at that time was based in Shanghai and he invited me to come over for a visit. I accepted his invitation and told him that I will be bringing two friends from USA with me. He was given a really nice condo by the company he was working for and it’s located near the famous Shanghai Bund. I was really excited to be bringing two American to witness how awesome China has turned to now. Most of the American still thinks that China is under developed and backwards. My American friends were totally blown away to see how modern Shanghai really is.

I have to admit for a 100% free accommodation, my brother’s pad totally kicked ass. It is a spacious 2 bedroom condo with a balcony view of Shanghai Bund. Sleeping arrangement was easy as Alfred decided to take the couch, Zach was given the guest room (Alfred and Zach didn’t want to share the same bed as they worried they might ended up SPOONING. For more details about spooning click here). I shared the master bedroom with my brother. The weather was in perfect condition as it was spring at that time. Day time was cooling but at night it can get really cold.

My brother did not have an extra blanket for Alfred but Zach was gentleman enough to pass his blanket to Alfred since he said he got the guest bedroom and Alfred got the couch. Zach did mention that his hometown is way colder and he could probably handle the cold. But every morning when we woke up and went to Zach’s room, you can see him dressed in his sweater, jeans and socks, wrapped in the bed sheet like a cocoon. So much for handling the cold Zach!

The living room – we spent a lot of time here going online and watching DVDs at the same time.

The balcony view and you can see Shanghai Bund from here, how cool is that. Sometimes at night there’s firework display.

We did a little bit of sight seeing but me and Zach tend to avoid touristy places. Alfred on the other hand was more into sight seeing and he went to quite a few places taking pictures and being a tourist. As for me and Zach, we normally just chilled in the living room in the daytime and went out at night to pubs to get buzz. We enjoyed those cheap Tsingtao beers with the local delicacies.

Some iconic buildings of Shanghai, I can’t remember the names though.

This building I can remember because Shanghai people call it the Bottle Opener Building. Easy to remember as me and Zach uses bottle opener a lot in our daily life. ( Pictures courtesy of Alfred )

We were invited to my brother’s colleague birthday party at Hooters Shanghai. I have to admit that this place totally rock from 3pm – 6pm as it is happy hours and the beer is one for one. So you have beer and pretty Chinese girls in sexy outfits, how can it go wrong! The Hooter girls are very friendly and they did some special dances and songs for the birthday celebrant. Most of them speak Engrish, I mean English but still have a little bit of accent. We are not complaining though. I love the way they shouted the word SURPRISE and the gif below will illustrate exactly how it sounded.

THIS IS HOW THE HOOTER GIRLS IN SHANGHAI PRONOUNCED THE WORD SURPRISE.

Zach and Alfred enjoying the birthday party in Hooters Shanghai with hot Chinese Hooter Girls at the background.

It was one of the best trips that I’ve made so far and my two American friends shared the same sentiments. Until today we still talked about how we enjoyed Shanghai and would love to make a trip again soon. We decided to go only when either one of us is celebrating our birthday while we are there. We just want to be SURPRISE again