1.4
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.
0.1
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.
166
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.
124
Slinging the same five noodle dishes for more than 70 years, Yong Huat is part aof why Eastie living is so easy.
103
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.
69
When I was a few apprehensive steps away from my first birthday, as family folklore goes, just before bed I would park a pedal car outside the room I shared with my parents. My tricycle would be banked by the potty. The point of this toddler triathlon was to never just totter about when you can traverse the length of your extended family’s rented Geylang shophouse in style.
9
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.
8
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.)
4
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.
1
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.
0
Singapore is a country where we greet, “Have you eaten?” instead of, “How are you?”. In the last few days, that has been sublimated for, “What will your last hawker center meal be?”
-1
It’s fitting that a stew of oxtail signaled the end of days as we knew it, that bullish attitude of, “Life, we got you.”