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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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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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Slinging the same five noodle dishes for more than 70 years, Yong Huat is part aof why Eastie living is so easy.
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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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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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An amazing woman shows up every morning at the gym for the day’s session, whether cardio, HIIT, resistance, strength, or everything, even though she’s fighting breast cancer on her own, in a country she’s just moved to. When she’s done, she feels like she’s earned the right to another day.
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Covid-19 has been all about distances: social of one to two meters, the Coronavirus’ four-meter airborne span, global affliction of economies projected to last more than 12 months.
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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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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?”