Friday, July 01, 2005
And More Food
Wednesday
On Wednesday, we went to the Singapore Zoo, which is one of the great zoos of the world because of its open and natural animal compounds. The large Great Rift Valley compound alone has a colony of 70 baboons! We saw the elephant show, after which Chynna got to feed the elephants (for a S$5.00 fee), and Chynna and I took an elephant ride. We had done that back in 1998, but this time the experience was a bit less thrilling. Back then there were no metal bars to hold on to, like now.
Lunch was rather basic fried noodles and chicken wings. Fortunately, it was cloudy most of the day, which helped to keep the temperatures down a bit. It was noticeably hotter when the sun came out, and would have been close to unbearable if the sun had been out all day!
For dinner we were picked up by a couple of tourism academics who I have gotten to know well at conferences in China and Hong Kong. They took us to an open air seafood restaurant on Singapore’s East Coast (between the airport and downtown). The area is famous for its seafood and we ordered chili crab, black pepper crab, garlic steamed fish (sea bass), and a plate of fried flat rice noodles wit beef for my son. It was a very messy but delicious meal. And the chili crab tasted almost exactly the same as my wife makes back in Flagstaff. She got the recipe from Singapore last time we were there because it was one of our favorite dishes.
Thursday
Thursday was a work day, of sorts. I went to the Geography Dept at the National University of Singapore, where I had taught during the 1997-98 school year. I had planned to meet with two former colleagues in the morning, and then have lunch with two others at noon. However, I never called to confirm one of the meetings, which had been arranged by email from the US, so we never connected. Lunch was Claypot rice with chicken and salted fish at the Singapore Yacht Club, which is open to non-members during the week. For dinner, my the family of my daughter’s friend from kindergarten in Singapore came to the Centrepoint shopping center, where we were staying, and we had dinner together at an Indonesian restaurant. The highlight of the meal was Tahu Telor, a deep fried tofu and egg mixture. It turns out that the father of Chynna’s friend grew up on Java in Indonesia, making this an appropriate, and somewhat different, meal for this evening.
On Wednesday, we went to the Singapore Zoo, which is one of the great zoos of the world because of its open and natural animal compounds. The large Great Rift Valley compound alone has a colony of 70 baboons! We saw the elephant show, after which Chynna got to feed the elephants (for a S$5.00 fee), and Chynna and I took an elephant ride. We had done that back in 1998, but this time the experience was a bit less thrilling. Back then there were no metal bars to hold on to, like now.
Lunch was rather basic fried noodles and chicken wings. Fortunately, it was cloudy most of the day, which helped to keep the temperatures down a bit. It was noticeably hotter when the sun came out, and would have been close to unbearable if the sun had been out all day!
For dinner we were picked up by a couple of tourism academics who I have gotten to know well at conferences in China and Hong Kong. They took us to an open air seafood restaurant on Singapore’s East Coast (between the airport and downtown). The area is famous for its seafood and we ordered chili crab, black pepper crab, garlic steamed fish (sea bass), and a plate of fried flat rice noodles wit beef for my son. It was a very messy but delicious meal. And the chili crab tasted almost exactly the same as my wife makes back in Flagstaff. She got the recipe from Singapore last time we were there because it was one of our favorite dishes.
Thursday
Thursday was a work day, of sorts. I went to the Geography Dept at the National University of Singapore, where I had taught during the 1997-98 school year. I had planned to meet with two former colleagues in the morning, and then have lunch with two others at noon. However, I never called to confirm one of the meetings, which had been arranged by email from the US, so we never connected. Lunch was Claypot rice with chicken and salted fish at the Singapore Yacht Club, which is open to non-members during the week. For dinner, my the family of my daughter’s friend from kindergarten in Singapore came to the Centrepoint shopping center, where we were staying, and we had dinner together at an Indonesian restaurant. The highlight of the meal was Tahu Telor, a deep fried tofu and egg mixture. It turns out that the father of Chynna’s friend grew up on Java in Indonesia, making this an appropriate, and somewhat different, meal for this evening.
