Singapore, Day 2

Marginally delayed (as usual), here is the account of Day 2 in Singapore. On the agenda:

• Singapore Botanic Gardens
• IT Malls
  
• SAM - Singapore Art Museum
• Beer (duh)
• Iggy's

First, the Gardens

Check it out at http://www.sbg.org.sg/

I was and still am very, very impressed with the botanic gardens.  The grounds are urban, in that the area is only a few minutes drive from the central business district, has connecting bus routes, and will soon have a subway station.  I arrived at the gardens around 7 AM, after waking up early (thank you, jet-lag) and then realizing that the gardens opened at 5 in the morning.  For reference, sunrise was probably around 6:45 AM, and the temperature was in the mid-80s, rising to the mid-90s by 11 AM.

What most impressed me was how much the gardens are used by people living in Singapore.  Entrance is free (with the exception of the Orchid Gardens), and there were hundreds of people out and about, running, walking their dogs, and particularly doing tai chi in groups of 1 or 2 up to 100.

The gardens are broken into several sections, including Swan Lake, the Ginger Garden, an urban rain forest, Palm Valley and Symphony Lake, and the spectacular National Orchid Garden.  Symphony Lake has a band stage in the middle of the lake, where the symphony presumably plays open air concerts.  Seating is on a grass hillside (Palm Valley).

The Ginger Garden is just what it sounds like...a garden of different ginger varieties.  Ginger is not a particularly spectacular plant, but it is obviously very important in Asian cuisine and to the regional economy.  Swan Lake has (you guessed it!) swans, both of the live and sculptural varieties.  The rain forest was where I started, and was really nice.  There are a few boardwalks wandering across a heavily wooded hillside, with some incredible trees...some with trunks 7 or 8 feet across.

I should set aside a special paragraph for the National Orchid Garden (NOG).  While I always knew that some people go nuts over orchids, breeding plants that might take a decade to produce a flower, I never really understood the obsession.  Having visiting the Singapore orchids, I get it now.  The NOG is about seven acres of orchids, bromeliads, and related plants.  I saw (no joke) thousands of different orchid varieties, some with flowers half the size of a fingernail, some with flowers bigger than my hand.

Ok, enough about the flowers!

So.  After a coffee and pastry in the gardens, I headed back to the hotel to cool off, and then popped out at noon to see the Central Business District (the CBD).  Sidebar: Singapore is obsessed with acronyms.  There is the CBD, the MRT (mass rapid transit), the SBG (see above), the CTE, PIE, and ERP (I don't know...something about roads).  So, I took the subway (MRT) on down there.  First stop: lunch.  I stopped into Ah Teng's Bakery, which is in the famous Raffles Hotel.

Lunch, and yes that is a coffee in the background.  Apparently coffee or tea is appropriate for lunch in Singapore.

Once that delightful sandwich was gone, I departed on a post-prandial tour, checking out two of the IT malls.  That's right...this is a city obsessed with shopping to an extreme.  There are many many malls in the city, including several (more than the two that I visited) that specialize strictly in electronics.  And I'm not talking about some wimpy American mall with 50,000 square feet of retail.  Both of these malls took up an entire city block, went up seven or eight stories, down one or two, and sold everything from cameras to laptops to chips to LEDs to specific cooling fans for a 1995 HP desktop that you can't even find online.  How happy was I?

Wanna know the weirdest thing about these two places?  In addition to all of the electronic goodies, they each had several sporting goods stores.  Because when I think of IT weenies, my mind immediately goes to athletics.

On to the afternoon!

One more stop before a quick run back to my hotel (I said I was tired!): the Singapore Art Museum.  The museum itself was quite interesting, as it is a converted colonial mansion.  There are open breezeways all the way around the building, which have been glassed in to protect the art.  The museum focuses on Singapore native artists, as well as regional artists from Malaysia, Thailand, China, etc.  No pictures inside, of course, but to the right is one of several sculptures in the museum courtyard...a wise man leaping over the mountain. 

On the plus side, I got in to the museum for free, but on the minus, the whole first floor was closed off to change out the exhibits.  Oh well...I leave you with the Buddha riding a dragon, with the museum building itself in the background.


My final activity of the day, after another visit to the hotel (I was still tired and sweaty), was to visit the waterfront and esplanade. They have built a large concert hall along with a long park, stretching many miles along the bay and coast.  The design of the hall was apparently inspired by fly eyes and durians...two things which I find particularly uninspiring.  Looking towards the hall:

And the other way, across the bay:

How crazy is that?  If I was in heavy construction, I would sure want to be in Asia.

It's been quite a day so far, but I'm not done yet.  Before the day was through, I found one of two brewpubs in Singapore and I had a late reservation at Iggy's restaurant, both of which I will save for another post.  The teaser is that Iggy's is on several "Top 50" lists for worlds best restaurants, and ranks #1 or #2 in Asia, depending on who you ask.  Yum!

Where am I again?

I'm in Singapore.  See, the thing is that I've always wanted to go to Asia, and then I found a pretty incredible deal to get over here while surfing flights and frequent flyer websites.  Strangely enough, even cheaper than just flying to Tokyo or Hong Kong, both of which I am flying through this week.  Cheaper than going to Europe.  In fact, cheaper (by several hundred dollars) than flying to Newark, NJ from Nashville.

So, I asked Dru if she wanted to go, but she was completely uninterested.  So then I asked what she thought about just me going, and I got an answer where she said "I don't have a problem with that" but the unspoken language (which boys can't hear, obviously), was pretty much "are you out of your mind?"  So I got my tickets.  Besides, Dru left me at home alone this year already, going to a frozen yoga retreat in the Smokies.  Basically the same thing, right?

Singapore, Day 0 (Travel)

Part A of this little saga is the journey from East Nashville to my hotel in Singapore.  I won't beat it to death, but let me point out that it is a LONG way...right about 10,000 miles and 29 hours.  I left for the airport a little before 6 AM on Saturday morning, for a flight to Chicago.  After sitting in O'Hare for a few hours, I got on a plane to Tokyo.  On a side note, it was my first time on a 747 probably since I was about 5 years old.  Big jets get me hot, and there is not much bigger than a 747 (okay, the A380, but I'll get to that).  So, ORD to NRT is scheduled at 13 hours in the air, and we used all of that.  Funny thing is, that is a heck of a long flight, but I wasn't even 2/3 of the way there yet.  I got off the flight and got on another plane for seven more hours.  Yikes!  At the end of the day, I had left home at 6 AM on October 31, and arrived in Singapore around 1 AM on November 2.

Singapore, Day 1

I was understandably bushed today, after a long journey and a short night of sleep.  I got up at 7:30 AM, showered and unpacked, and had a look at the guidebook.  The plan was basically to take it easy, see the city, etc.  I mapped out a route down Orchard road, which is probably the shopping mecca of this part of the world, and then over into Little India.  Little India was really neat.  While Singapore as a whole is very much "build it bigger, more steel, more glass", Little India consisted entirely of 2-3 story buildings that looked like they had been there for 50 years.  Every foot of street level space is shops, restaurants, and markets.  I did nothing but walk up and down the alleys for about 2 hours, soaking it in.

Finally I settled in at a place for lunch, serving Indian food, obviously.  I had chicken biryani, which was spicy and good.  Turns out that utensils are not par for the course, as everyone around me was just digging in with their fingers.  When in Rome....  Interestingly enough, napkins are also not standard, which left me with some greasy hands after lunch.  At this point, I decided to stumble on home, probably about a 2.5 mile walk.

Singapore is just one and a half degrees north of the equator, and I had heard about the heat, but I wasn't concerned.  Looking at the weather, the high was going to be mid to upper 80s, with humidity around 60%.  Ha! I said...I'm from Nashville, where we have 95 degree days with 95% humidity...mid 80s is a cakewalk!  Well, I set off on my trek, with my jeans and shoes.  After lunch, I needed a siesta, becase it was getting HOT!  The temperature may have not been through the roof, but that tropical sun was beating down.  I think the combination of the long plane ride followed by the heat got me pretty dehydrated and overheated, because I was litteraly stumbling down the hall by the time I got back to the hotel.  I drank about a gallon of water and went to bed.

After a nap and a cooling rainstorm, I hit the streets again, to find Chinatown and dinner.  Chinatown, interestingly, was not especially Chinese.  It was not like going to Chinatown in Boston or San Fransisco, where you have sudden culture shock walking in.  Singapore is extremely diverse, full of transplants from Malaysia, India, Japan, China, Britain, and many other places.  Hence, there are Chinese businesses all over the city, rather than being concentrated in one neighborhood.  The same is true of all those cultures...Chinatown is home to a number of very British-looking law firms, plus the Singapore office of Williams-Sonoma.  (Note that I have not seen a WS store, just the office.)

Dinner was at a hawker center, which I will write up in another post.  Suffice it to say that it was delicious and cheap.  Future posts will also include shopping mania and a strange observation on businesses here.  Sorry that there isn't much for pictures, but I am saving them for future posts.  With that, it is 9:15 PM here and 7:15 AM at home, so I think I'm tired.

Beer Review - Bullfrog Brewery, Williamsport, PA

Despite being severely delayed due to my laziness, I'm reporting today (October 14) on a visit to a Pennsylvania brewpub on August 20.

Williamsport

For work, back in August, I found myself in Williamsport, PA. For those of you not familiar with Williamsport, it is a) close to nowhere (about equidistant from Buffalo, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, see map below), b) the home of the Little League World Series (which, incidentally, started the day I was there), and c) has some tasty tasty beer.


View Larger Map

The Bullfrog Brewery

The brewery is actually a brewpub, and it is pretty sweet. The pub is right on the main street in downtown Williamsport, which is an authentic small town business district. When you walk in, the copper kettle and mash tun are right in your face, just in case you didn't get the whole beer thing from the sign outside. Turn left into the restaurant and there are about eight big fermenters behind the bar. Check it out at bullfrogbrewery.com

The Beer

I had a sampler, as you can see above. I tried Apricot Wheat, Edgar IPA, the stout, an Oktoberfest, and several others.  Overall, pretty good beer, but the IPA was exceptional, as was the stout.  Oktoberfest and the Wheat were eh, but that was OK, because they have great atmosphere.  It was also extra delicious since I got to emailing with Dru and Bair, and because silly David chose to drive to Baltimore instead of having a beer and flying out of ol' Williamsport-Lycoming Regional. 

The airport, incidentally, is itty-bitty.  It is the kind of place with one airline (US Air), having one ticket agent, who is also the gate agent, who is also the ramp agent.  Seriously, she printed my ticket, went out an unloaded/reloaded the baggage on the plane, drove it around to "baggage claim" and then came back in to scan everyone's ticket and load the plane.  And she did all this in about 20 minutes.  Too bad you don't see that kind of efficiency in Philladelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, or any of the other dumb hubs that I have to fly through.

Alaska is Perty

Wow, it has been a while. Two main updates in my life:

1) Our house got robbed, but whatever.
2) I spent a (truncated) week fishing in Alaska. Sweet!

Alaska

So, my dad and I had planned all summer to go on a fishing trip in southern Alaska, Thursday to Wednesday. Wednesday night, I get home to a guilty looking dog, a broken window, and a half-eaten piece of pizza. The burglars broke a back window, took a piece of pizza out of our fridge to settle the big dog down, and proceed to burgle my Xbox, Dru's laptop, two bottles of wine, and a broken iPod. I understandably felt violated over the invasion of the fridge (for the pizza), really wanted to play some Halo to calm down, and had a "well, crap" moment. Several hours later, police report is filed, house is dusted for prints (really!), and Dru and I were trying the new Pho place in our neighborhood. In the end, our departure was pushed back to early Saturday morning, but we still had to come back Wednesday for a variety of reasons.

Up North

We traveled to Juneau via Salt Lake and Seattle and then took a float plane about 60 miles out to the lodge. The picture up top is the view from the dock...the peaks are the mainland and all the low hills and foggy area are islands in the channel. Alaska is totally awesome...where else can you see sea otters, whales, sea birds, porpoises, and sea lions in the same place? Here is a whole mess of sea lions, lounging on some very sharp rocks and hanging out in the water.

Just doing their thing

The fishing was fantastic; salmon, halibut and bass on the ocean, plus salmon and Dolly Vardens (a type of trout) in the rivers. The Dollies are probably the most fun, just because the salmon are swarming and everywhere...they literally bump into you in the river because they are so thick. The picture to the right is representative of a small group working up the river. All those dark marks in the water are fish. (Click to get a big version.)

Here's me in the river, waiting for a bump:

Like I said above...AK=perty.

Re: ocean catches, I brought back a fresh halibut (60 lb fish!) and several salmon. To the left , the partitioning of said fish.

Food on the trip, as you can imagine, was lots and lots of fresh halibut, salmon, bass, and crab. In fact, the folks we were with have several shrimp and crab pots in various places around the island, so our very last stop on the day we left was at the shrimp pots, for fresh shrimp to bring home.

All in all, I ended up with about three pounds of cleaned shrimp. It would have been more, except for a very happy octopus that was doing its thing in one of the pots...not too many shrimp in there.

So I leave you with an amused Ben and a floppy octopus:

Success!

I needed to post because we had a here-to-fore absolutely unheard of event occur. Are you ready? Ben uttered the words .... "I am a fan of this salad." Now, Ben is not one to praise any fruit or vegetable, and yet, here was unabashed enjoyment of several vegetables and one fruit. Again, normally it is a struggle to get this guy to eat anything that does not fall in the meat/potatoes/beer/cheese category and he complains if I make vegetarian anything. So as a public service to anyone out there in the same predicament, I offer this recipe for your enjoyment. It is a seriously good way to enjoy the summer produce and is all-around awesome.

Blackberry Vinaigrette Goat Cheese Salad

(serves 2 for meal or 4 as salad appetizer)

1 pint blackberries
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
1 T vanilla sugar (or plain white sugar)
Small handful of lettuce leaves (your variety choice), torn into bite size pieces
2 "baby" yellow crookneck squash, sliced into thin coins
¼ cup roasted pine nuts
3 oz of a semi-soft goat cheese
4 oz of grilled chicken, diced (optional)
2 medium size tomatoes, wedged into 8 pieces

Toss the blackberries with sugar and vinegar; let sit while the salad is prepared. Place lettuce in shallow salad dishes, sprinkle with squash coins, and dot with goat cheese. Place tomato wedges around the outer edge of the plate. Sprinkle pine nuts across the top of the salad. Add warm diced chicken. Use a slotted spoon to split the blackberries between the salads leaving a dozen in the bowl. Crush the remaining blackberries with the balsamic vinegar and split the mixture across the salads. Enjoy!

Going Greek

Just wanted to put in a good word about a new restaurant I went to this evening - Zavo's, the greek place across from the Family Wash. This space used to be a sketchy biker bar, but they have cleaned it all up and put in sleek modern decor. I have heard good things about this place and they were recommended in the Scene awhile back, and heck, it is like, a mile away. Mari-etta and I went and shared the Mediterranean platter, kafeteres, and a salad. The platter came with warm "pita" bread - actually a flat bread with more oil than your normal pita - but all the better to sop up the hummus, babaganoush, tzatiki, feta, and olives. The kafteres (or something like that) were banana peppers filled with melted goat cheese - spicy and different! And the salad was tomatoes, shallots, cucumber, feta, and olives, a perfect accompaniment to the other tastes. To finish - baklava, and a big piece too. Not to cloyingly sweet, nice and nutty. Yum!

Reasonably priced, and they have a special every day. The only downside is that there is no wine, but I did enjoy a Fat Tire and they do have all the Yazoos. Four stars (Ben, make that 4.25). We'll be back for sure :)

Una epifanía de los tacos - Mas Tacos Por Favor!

Holy crap! I was in the midst of a new San Francisco post, when I had una epifanía (an epiphany) regarding tacos (los tacos). As many who hang out in East Nashville know, there is a taco truck that parks at 5 Points most nights, in the midst of all the bars over here. (Perfect business plan...drunk hipsters + 11 PM + hungry = $$$)

The truck & business is called Mas Tacos and you can find out all about them on twitter & facebook (twitter.com/mastacos, etc.). They tweet/post the menu every night. I've been meaning to try it out for the last few months, but I'm never hungry or around when the truck is parked out on the street. Also, Dru thought the idea of food from a truck is totally sketchy, even though she (thoroughly) enjoyed the Silver Truck and Haven Bros. up in Providence.

Tonight I had a 9 PM hockey game, which makes for a hungry ben around 11...a perfect storm. I convinced Dru to get dressed and walk over with me. On the menu tonight:

• Chicken with grilled onions & roasted tomatillo salsa
• Fried tilapia with lime-marinated red onions and a spicy yogurt sauce
• Quinoa with roasted potatoes, grilled corn, red cabbage, cilantro, sour cream & roasted tomatillo salsa

After much hemming and hawing we decided to try one of each, on the condition that sweetie had to have a bite. The tilapia was perfectly spicy, with the creamy sauce mellowing and melding the flavors. The chicken was falling-apart soft, almost like pulled smoked chicken, and was delicious.

The quinoa though, was the best by far. For those who don't know, quinoa is a grain from South America and is pronounced "keen-wah." It is cooked and looks like couscous, and works as a substitute for that or for rice, but it has a rich, nutty flavor and is much more nutritious than the alternatives. Below, I've shamelessly ripped off a picture of cooked quinoa from a blog I found on the web. (The post is at http://mmm-yoso.typepad.com/mmmyoso/2007/12/quinoa-salad.html. Check it out, it is a food blog out of San Diego and they have some good recipes and reviews.) Anyways, the quinoa taco was sweet and spicy and smoky and was totally delicious...good for Mas Tacos for having a real vegetarian option.


So! I highly recommend and I think Dru is a convert too. Come over to East Nash some night to eat a taco and drink a beer.