WOW the strangest thing happened. I just put out some food for the kitties. Then I heard a strange meow from Buddy. I looked back and asked Buddy what’s wrong…then I realized I was looking at TWO grey cats!! WTF?? It was a kitty i didn’t know eating cat food in the kitchen!!

He kinda looks like Buddy (grey) but with faint stripes on its back and a long tail (Buddy is grey and has a kinked tail…like a half tail). And he walked all the way into the kitchen (it’s far from the back door) into my house to eat my cat food?? ARGH! I love all cats, but I feel violated!!! I hissed at it so it ran quickly away. Bastard!! GROSS!!!

I wonder if my house-sitter had mistakened the Buddy imposter for my cat and allowed it in and fed it, hence its bravado at walking into my house….?

Zion’s been totally absent. Boo. She came back late on the day I returned and was there the next morning. But haven’t seen her since. She must be freaked out by the “new” cat.

Ew! Ew! Ew! I don’t like the idea of some stray cat in my house! Now I really feel like crazy cat lady!

I never thought I could find a match for P’EatZZa…but this WINS! Drum roll…it’s……french fry coated bacon on a stick!!! Innovation is magnificent.

loss of appetite via 54

I saw this on Obama’s site and commented to 54 that there’s no Asian-only button for Obama. Only this:

So he made me this his nickname for me is Azn. Urban dictionary seems to imply that the term “azn” is negative. I just find it funny actually.

Woo!

My flight got in an hour early so I went to work. Yes, with a miserable 15 vacation days a year, every day (even half) counts.

Sitting in the NYC subway (people were actually reading BOOKS, instead of playing with their handphones or portable game console), then walking home from work from the subway station, I felt SO at home. I noticed how unclean and imperfect everything is in NYC compared to impeccably clean and organized Singapore, but somehow, I prefer the former.

Boo…I’m leaving Singapore in about 7 hours.

Yay…I’ll be going home to my KITTIES (meow meow miss them!) and my Park Slope life and yes, YAY back to work (I actually miss it!) in Manhattan.

I’ve always said that I am one lucky bitch to feel at home in many places and to have the mobility (and luck!) to be able to somewhat choose where I wanna be. But it doesn’t make saying goodbye any easier.

Till next year, Singapore!

I’m all MALL-ed out. Singapore is turning into one big mall. It’s been happening for a while, but everywhere I turn, there are either brand new malls or existing malls becoming bigger. And all the malls are starting to look alike…with the same shops that repeat over and over and over and over again (how many Giodarnos and G2000s can there BE?). And you can’t avoid them. They are next to any MRT stop, and many pedestrian walkways turn into another strip mall. People shuffle around like they are shopping even when they are not shopping.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: shopping, in particular shopping for clothes for oneself too often, is probably one of the worst opiates for the mind. All that time spent on thinking about ME ME ME in this or that outfit, looking at MYself in the mirror and thinking about how I look in each outfit, can’t be a very healthy habit. A friend of mine in NYC did give me an alternative point of view: that dressing up is in itself a way of expressing yourself, so putting at outfit together is somewhat like a work of personal art. Which made me re-think my aghast at shopping (but not quite change it). But I doubt most people (not all) in Singapore dress for art (vs. how people in downtown/Williamsburg NYC dress).

It was such a breath of fresh air…well, maybe not fresh air, but just a figure of speech…to go to Geylang on Sunday night for some solid beef kway teow. Whatever I said about bad food in Singapore, I take some of it back because our Geylang beef kway teow and hot-plate tofu were just AMAZING. Geylang is one of those last rare places in Singapore that hasn’t yet been MALL-ed…along with Little India…it’s kinda messy, dirty, gritty, with glorious, oh glorious food, that reminds you that you aren’t just at another American more with more Asian people.

Speaking of which, Singapore looks more and more like suburban America every day, in a concentrated form. If you drive through any suburb in America, it all looks the same, with the same restaurants, same stores, that repeat again and again. Only in Singapore, it’s more densely packed together, with more Asian people, and better public transportation (more later). Khakis and polo t-shirts even have the same look as what suburban Floridians were (where the climate is similar). It’s pretty boring, both suburban America and mall-ed Singapore; they make me want to stab my eyes out because it’s brain-numbing.

But on to what I LOVE about Singapore…the MRT! In particular…train times! You know those signs that tell you how many minutes till the next train? GENIUS! I love knowing whether I need to start running to catch the train, or stroll, or how long to wait till the next train. They only just started doing this in NYC on ONE of the ten thousand train lines (L train), and half of the time, it isn’t even accurate. Between both, NYC needs this system more because of how the trains intersect – i.e. in Singapore, there’s pretty much one train going either way at each station, whereas in NYC, you’d have multiple trains going multiple ways at most stations, so it’d be useful to know where each train with so you can pick which of the multiple trains that get you home. But it’s light years before NYC does it right…the NYC train stations all look like rat-eaten, moldy (yah, you can actually see rats running around the tracks) hell-holes that smell like pee all the time…there are delays on the train all the time, and weekend trains are re-routed to incomprehensible levels most of the time…they have bigger problems to think about.

Still, believe it or not, I’m even beginning to miss all the inconveniences and all the stink of NYC. I miss being inspired by my every day life…something I now realize I took for granted…NYC just oozes with nebulous inspiration. It’s a subtle vibe that just hangs in the air all the time. You don’t have to seek it…it just seeps into you by osmosis. I just don’t get that in Singapore, as much as I love my friends and family here. It’s been wiped away with the scarily clean train stations (have you noticed how CLEAN our train stations are?? Look at the Chinatown MRT station…everything SHINES with polish! I don’t know about you but I find it scary. I feel like smudging the walls with my hands sometimes just to get some of the glaring sheen off) and smothered by air-con malls.

After my mad cravings for crab beehoon, I had an overkill of crabs last weekend. I had crabs for lunch and dinner last Thursday night and on Saturday night in KL, we were brought out for a seafood dinner with 2 different crab dishes. I ate and I ate and I ate. On Saturday day, my both legs broke out into a horrible rash that worsened after the seafood dinner. It’s a pretty disgusting sight, my legs…it is COVERED with what looks like mosquito bites, big and small, and it ITCHES like a mofo.

FUCK! Am I now also allergic to crabs??…are you kidding me?? It’s one of my fav foods and I had never been allergic to it, gosh darn it! Why must my body torture me so? It’s all still speculation now…I’m only guessing that the rash, which took about 4 days to subside (it’s still itchy), is attributed to the crabs because I didn’t eat anything out of the ordinary and I definitely ate more crabs than an average person in a short time period.

But I need to be sure. So I’m definitely gonna try to eat crab beehoon next week when the rash really clears up. If I break out in a rash again, I can be absolutely sure that I am now allergic to crabs. A deathly experiment, but I. must. know. Until then, I cannot accept the fact that I, Kelly Chansidine, may not eat crabs again?!?!! Nooooo!!!!! Have mercy! Not the CRABS! And the husband had the cheek to say “well, honey, maybe you can just eat the beehoon?” to try to make me feel better about my plight. Pah! Blasphemy! Crab beehoon without the crab! What’s the point? Oh, the tragedy!

Planet of the Apes is an AWESOME book. It’s even more fun reading it in my room in Tioman where there were wild monkeys jumping around right next to our room. It’s almost the perfect novel. And the double whammy ending is just…WOW.

Tioman was as magical as I remembered it to be. There is something REALLY special about the island. As the ferry nears the island, you can see it appear slowly from the clouds. It’s just a beautiful, lush island. I have never been to the resort-y parts of the island, only one a stopover at Salang which is pretty horrid, and have no desire to ever go to the big resorts there. ABC (a part of Tioman) is, IMO, the best part of Tioman, and Bamboo Hills Chalet absolutely incredible.

What makes Tioman even more special for us is that in our many trips to ABC, we’ve gotten to know people working and living on the island; they were, on this trip back, mostly still there. It was almost like seeing old friends again. And having friends there makes all the difference in the world. On our last night, we had a long talk with Azmi, the guy who works at Bamboo Hill and who pretty much grew up on the island. He told us how he loves ABC because of its kampung feel, unlike the other parts of the island, and hope it doesn’t change. Me neither…but it almost seems inevitable in due time. On this trip back, after 2 years, I noticed a significant amount of development on ABC…a few new food stores, renovated old stores, and even a massage place now. You can tell the economy is doing well. When a yoga studio appears, all is over. ha! They even added sand in front of Bamboo Hill so there is a proper beach now.

Because of Tioman, and of course great family time, I’m really gonna try to visit at least once a year now.

Just returned from Round 1 of my brother’s wedding in KL. Food in M’sia is DAMN SHIOK! I know what I’m about to say is pretty blasphemous, and a big disclaimer that I’ve only been back for about a week…but I haven’t had really mind-blowing food in Singapore…most meals I’ve had has been just alright, just 1 or 2 that have been good. Gasp! Has the standard of food in Singapore fallen?

I asked my friends/family here and the general consensus is that it is true that the general standard of food has dropped. Many theories abound. Some say it’s because of food inflation, so the stalls are skimping on quality ingredients. Others say it’s because of the rise in immigrants in Singapore…so your food is no longer cooked by a local person but a new immigrant (cheap labor). Another theory is that there has been a rise in franchised food, particularly in the food courts where food is part prepared in a factory somewhere and then shipped to the various food courts nationwide. So to find really great food in Singapore, it’s no longer a take-for-granted thing that it’d be good anywhere and everywhere, you’d have to go to specific places for specific food. I guess I have romanticised SG food while reeally craving for it in NYC.

But Malaysia, OH MY GOD, Malaysia food!! Food in Malaysia has generally been known to be better than Singapore…but I think, in my very few days here, the difference between the standard of SG and M’sia food must have widened…or I must have been very lucky with food in Malaysia and very unlucky with food in Singapore. The first meal we had was at the rest stop in Yong Peng where all the tour buses stop (our entourage of family and family friends to the KL wedding took up an entire 30 seater coach…party bus!). The mee rebus there was AMAZING. Had the right amount of spice and sweetness and the noodles were fantastic. Every meal we had in Malaysia after that was just amazing. The hotel buffet breakfast (we stayed at Cititel Mid Vally…really crappy hotel in every way…service, rooms, etc) was the only saving grace for the shitty hotel…the nasi lemak and curry chicken there was fantastic. We had amazing seafood that night and on the way back, we stopped by the Newton Food Center in Malacca and the roti chanai there was just unbelieveable…crunchy fresh on the outside with the perfect chewy texture inside with great curry. WAH LAU! DAMN SHIOK!

Tomorrow, Chansidines head back to Malaysia again to heaven on earth, TIOMAN! Man, I’ve had been longing for Tioman for a long time. Can’t wait!