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Covid-19 Comestibles Desiree Koh Covid-19 Comestibles Desiree Koh

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Because I have lived in Katong for almost 30 years and I’m a lifelong Eastie, everyone asks which the best Katong laksa is. It’s the one simmered to spirited life in my mom Ade’s kitchen. You know — the one that only the backyard can fit, with industrial-sized woks and cauldrons, and charcoal stoops and gas tanks for zhi char-intense wok hei.

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Covid-19 Comestibles Desiree Koh Covid-19 Comestibles Desiree Koh

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I hit Two Men Bagel House up after long rides, long runs, long hikes, and for long conversations. But even by myself, how would I ever feel lonely when there’s so much bagel sandwich to smash? This requires the full concentration of a Rodin sculpture.

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Covid-19 Comestibles Desiree Koh Covid-19 Comestibles Desiree Koh

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We live in a Singapore with very solid renditions of 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.

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Covid-19 Comestibles Desiree Koh Covid-19 Comestibles Desiree Koh

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Salad days in Singapore: Pineapple, turnip, cucumber, kalamansi, bean sprouts, dough crullers, crispy tofu, fermented prawn paste, sugar, guava and mango if you’re lucky, chilli paste if you know what’s good for you.

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Covid-19 Life Desiree Koh Covid-19 Life Desiree Koh

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Home to Kang Ha Pheng Sim Kok, a Chinese clan association, this Geylang shophouse features Art Deco-Moderne etched into colonial architecture unique to Southeast Asia and garnished in Singaporean hybridization — wooden Malay framework, glazed Peranakan tiles, louvred French windows, neo-Classical cornice work, Indian soldiers carved in Chinese fashion.

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Covid-19 Comestibles Desiree Koh Covid-19 Comestibles Desiree Koh

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As a very poor excuse for a Chinese person, I’m not fond of rice. As a 12-year Chicagoan, I can live on bread, and just bread alone, if bread includes pizza, which it should, and does.

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Covid-19 Life Desiree Koh Covid-19 Life Desiree Koh

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Marina Bay this evening was as breathtaking as ever, moonbeams descending upon where the newest part of the city waterfront hugs the Singapore River, the river gazing back up, reflecting starshine. “S G ❤” splayed across the Sands hotel’s three columns was the showstopper that snapped my head to the right for an OMGape as I arc’d over the bridge, and made me brake at the bottom, break my journey, and swerve over to the bay side to properly let the MBS light sparkle in my eyes. (All of the above would have been lethal at the same time, 7.15pm, on any regular evening with vehicles surging homewards out of downtown.)

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Covid-19 Life Desiree Koh Covid-19 Life Desiree Koh

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Tumbleweeds now trundle across a desolate desert highway faster than a Singaporean getting up for a glass of water. Life for 85 percent of people here has bonked, the way ice cream plonks onto the ground after free-falling from your cone. It’s not pretty. But nature — Coronavirus included — remains hard at work, what with all the pollination and preying and Darwining and climate changing and crazy moon phasing that needs to get done.

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Covid-19 Life Desiree Koh Covid-19 Life Desiree Koh

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The mechanical, communal and spiritual process of dismantling Singapore’s Covid-19 circuit began with rain at the break of dawn, a cleanse. Never too late for a clean slate.

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