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On the morning of November 5, my mom and I hunkered down living the U.S. election results à la minute. I did the same over WhatsApp and iMessage with friends both in Singapore and America, occasionally nervously forwarding memes to break the tension. We all know how that day unfolded and ended. Many U.S. friends called it a night and went to bed disgusted at the disorienting spread of red, like a CSI scene that won’t go away. Dreadful déjà vu crept leeched their way into our body systems like a new Coronavirus strain, toppling mental facilities and sinking hearts. For the next few days, we kept refreshing our online trackers of choice (NewYorker.com was mine, the most optimistic of them all), and actually, the urgency grew as incumbent leads inched towards the challenger’s favor. 0.3% had never looked so good before. And then it was over, with the kind of happy ending one can only dare imagine during these times. And we declared a Vittlery Tour celebrating each swing state win.

We live in a Singapore with very solid renditions of a regional American (or French, or Italian, or Chinese, or Spanish) cuisine. So it’s a way — even a fact — of life that to celebrate Wisconsin, we trundled up to a little hot dog stand using only Johnsonville bratwursts in Chinatown run by a Korean family. Of course, we had to get the Original Chili Dog (angels ought to play the Happy Days theme song as soon as you chomp into it, and note the yellow cheddar), the bestselling Kim Chi Dog (fresh homemade mound of your fermentation fantasies come true over beef bulgogi over sausage), and the Bulgogi Dog.

Thank you, Wisconsin, for phat sausages and showing up. Thank you, Park family, for a chili dog that reminds us of how much of America there is to love. Thank you, Singapore, for this corner in the shadow of a mosque and a Hindu temple where hot dogs hold their sizzling own even as Type A Sichuan chillies growl from mala neighbors, made by a Korean lady for an American, Ecuadorian and Singaporean to swoop into. This hot dog meal is more successful than the 2018 Trump-Kim summit will ever be, and far more palatable and satisfying and accomplished.