Thursday, January 18, 2007

What Time Is It?

Just remembered something funny Louis pointed out on the old Singapore $2 note. The four main races in Singapore were portrayed on the note. I can’t remember exactly what they were, but it was something like the Chinese with the lion dance, Malays with kompangs or smtg, Indians also doing something stereotypically cultural, and then, the Eurasians… What were the Eurasians doing? They were holding balloons.

What did Eurasians holding balloons mean? Life’s a party for them huh… What would have been a better way to depict them? Maybe have my mother-in-law making Sheperd’s Pie in front of a Christmas Tree while singing the “jingly nona” song? :o) It’s difficult to be the ‘lain-lain’ of Singapore n Malaysia I suppose. Not having a distinct cultural background… part Asian, part Portugese, part Dutch, part Mat Salleh…

But then again, it’s not easy being a Singaporean or Malaysian outside of South East Asia. Ben says we’re really ‘lost’ here in Dubai. The Pakistanis think we’re Chinese nationals, the Chinese nationals think we’re Filipino, the Filipinos think we’re Thai, the angmohs call anyone ‘yellow’ an Oriental, and the locals… well, we’re just the ‘golongan hamba’ along with every Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Pakistani, etc who come here to work.

Chinese and Indians have cuisines that are uniquely theirs, and what do we have? Ice kacang. Satay bihun. Red mi goreng.

It’s interesting to study a particular country’s culinary history and influences, apart from geography. Confucius emphasised the art of cooking and enjoyment of life, establishing culinary standards and proper table etiquette. And by fusing these beliefs, the Chinese dine with the mantra that food and friends are inseparable. And that’s how we have communal dining to this day. Taoism however was concerned with the search for longevity and nourishment of the body, studying the medicinal properties in foods. Hence, the liberal use of herbs in Chinese cooking and toasts to long life, good health, etc at dinner parties or the long list of good wishes my fifth aunt makes when we do the Chinese New Year ‘lo hei’.

In Singapore cuisine, there’s always the chicken n egg argument about whether a dish is actually Malaysian or “uniquely Singapore”. I guess if we were to make Singapore’s culinary history interesting, we can’t mention too much about how everything is borrowed from Malay, Indian, Chinese n Portugese cuisines, but that it’s a unique ‘rojak’ of all the above.

And the national drink isn’t that gross stuff from the bottle that you mix with pineapple juice or whatever. How many uncles do you see at a coffee shop ordering Singapore Sling? Singapore is the Lion City. And our national drink is TIGER beer (the Thais stole our Singha). The national sport is played at Singapore Pools.

Perhaps we could make a special paste of durian and ikan bilis... call it tapenade esplanade. By the way, we all know Eight Wonder’s Harry’s Island isn’t really named after some fictional character… So let’s have Roti Harry, cos we still don’t know who John is. Like saying grace before a meal, let every uncle, aunty n child in every restaurant in Singapore shout, what time is it?

Time for some Roti Harry, Chil-LEE Crab and Stamford Waffles!

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Size is everything

Dubai's big on everything. Big malls. Big cars. Big spenders. Even the makan stuff is huge. That's not a baguette, it's a masala dosai!


So when it comes to their lucky draw contests, you can imagine how big the prizes are too. Of course one would also need to spend big money to be able to enter any of the big draws here.

The annual 45-day Dubai Shopping Festival started a month back, and with it, mega raffle and lucky draws. Now we're not talking grand prizes such as "A trip for 2 to New York" or "$10,000". No, no. We're talking HUGE-ass prizes. And on a daily basis.

There's the Daily Lexus Mega Raffle - daily prize of 2 Lexus cars PLUS AED100,000, and the Daily Gold Raffle - daily prize of 1 kg of gold. So that's 45 KILOS of gold, 90 Lexus cars and AED4.5 million they're giving away. However, these raffle draws aren't exactly like Toto where you can spend as little as $2 for a chance at hitting the jackpot. Each raffle ticket costs about AED200.

Then there are lucky draws organised by shopping malls and other companies...... "10 winners x AED100,000 each in fortnightly draw"...... "Gold phones worth AED 1 million to be won"...... "AED50,000 in cash + 50,000 in shopping vouchers"......

Virgin Records has a small but interesting draw - buy 2 "Front Row" DVDs, stand a chance to win your height in DVDs. So even if you're kinda short like me, that still makes up a 158cm tower of DVDs!

And you can certainly forget about "cheapo" prizes like a Camry. Think BIG. Like Dubai Duty Free. They're giving away AED1 million in one raffle draw, and luxury cars in another, like this Lamborghini here.


Tuesday, January 16, 2007

One little, two little, three little……

I remember reading an article a few years back about the Indian diaspora, and thinking ya, Indians are EVERYWHERE! A significant percentage of the Malaysia and Singapore population is made up of Indians, but of course, these are Indians whose ancestors had come to Malaya a long, long time ago. More recently though, you get lots of Indian nationals in the region… y’know, like the I.T. guys you see at work who hang out in the corner sipping tea and chatting. Then you go to London, they’re there! Amsterdam, there! New York, there!

When I was training at SIA, there were just 6 of us girls from Malaysia, 1 girl from Indonesia, and the rest (like about 20 of them) were from India. I have nothing against Indians of course. Our instructor actually made me some sort of Chinese-Indian liaison ‘cos there was hissing and scratching between the Indian and Chinese girls from Day One. The Indian girls kept saying we spoke funny and made fun of the way we said “lah”, “aiya” and “can, can”. They believed they did not have an accent ‘cos they spoke “Queen’s English”. The Chinese girls kept complaining that the Indian girls were so ‘how lian’ and ‘sombong’. To make things worse, all of us, new to Singapore, had no idea what the heck people meant when they mentioned “P.I.E., E.C.P., C.B.D.” and how to pronounce Tampines without sounding vulgar.

Anyway, back to Indians. I think it was my brother Jeremy who mentioned before that we seem to find really good friends in Indians. My grandfather’s best friend was an Indian. My dad has some really good Indian friends whom he’s known since his university days. My brothers have some pretty close buddies who are Indian too. And me, well, let’s just say I’m so un-Chinese that I actually respond if someone on the street shouts “Hey, macha!” You can thank my INDIAN friend, Jamie for that. You can also thank the ‘mats’ back home for that since I especially don’t respond to “Ah Moi”.

For my brothers and I, I guess a big reason why we have as many Indian, Malay, Eurasian and ‘lain-lain’ friends as Chinese ones is probably ‘cos we don’t speak Chinese! So in school, we either hung out with the non-Chinese or other un-Chinese Chinese like us. My brother, Andrew, is so ‘angmoh-fied’ that when he was young, he’d fill in “English” under the “Race” field in forms.

Now, here in Dubai, Indians everywhere too. My first few ‘friends’ in Dubai are from India. Ben laughs each time I say “my friend” ‘cos they’re actually the bus drivers lah. First there was the small, short guy who drove the shuttle from Ewan to the nearby shops. Actually, he’s from Nepal. I guess the drivers see me so often ‘cos I’m always at home, taking the same shuttle every other day, and not many people take the shuttle in the afternoons. So after a while, my Nepalese ‘friend’ recognises me and waves or nods when he sees me. Ben thinks it’s hilarious how we nod to each other like, “Ay, macha…” Anyway, my Nepalese friend disappeared one day and was replaced with a different driver, from Bangalore. He’s my new ‘friend’ now and we nod n wave too! Sometimes we chat – about casual stuff… like the ‘veather’.

Guide to the friendly nod n wave:
Nod head upwards = “Ay”.
Return with 2 nods, pausing between each nod = “Ay. Whazzup”.
Tilt head left, then right, followed by nod = “Ok lah. You?”
Tilt head left, then right, then wave.
(Note #1: Quick tilt = Good. Normal tilt = Ok. Slow tilt = So, so lah)
(Note #2: If you’re too lazy to nod, raising your eyebrows works too)

My other friend is one of the drivers on the Ewan-Gardens route. His name’s Subriano and he’s from Goa. He’s my favourite driver ‘cos he drops me off right outside Ibn Battuta Mall so I don’t have to make the long walk there from Gardens. Among all the drivers, he speaks the best English, so if I’m taking his bus I usually sit in front so we can chat. We chat about lots of stuff lah… How’s my job hunt getting along… Friday Mass at the church in Jebel Ali… Christmas in Dubai… His family back in India… Life in Singapore……

Angmohs speak English so why don’t I have a whole lot of mat salleh friends? I just realised that I still find it difficult to be ‘buddy-buddy’ with Caucasians probably ‘cos I just can’t do the kiss-the-cheek thing without feeling terribly uncomfortable. It’s like so muah-muah. And here, it’s done three times so muah-muah-muah. Ugh… Maybe it’s ‘cos I’m not sure if I should go left cheek or right cheek first? Or most probably it’s ‘cos it’s difficult when short Asian has to tiptoe to reach tall mat salleh’s cheek. Some just do it cheek to cheek but some actually kiss each cheek and actually verbalise the “muah”. And sometimes you meet someone who’s quite a good friend by now, and so you think it’s gonna be a hug, but you get the cheek-to-cheek thing instead as you’re reaching out for a hug, and it just ends up really messy and dumb. Ugh…

I know I’m not anyone’s brother-in-law, but next time you see me, just do the wave, nod, “Ay, macha”.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

What were you doing New Year’s Eve?

On New Year’s Eve, Ben was at work from morning till midnight as usual. He took his camera along in case he had a chance to see the fireworks display outside the Burj Al Arab after work.

A New Year’s Eve dinner menu was created, and special table menus were ‘printed’ just for this one night.

The menu was ‘lasered’ onto the glass prism, and visible only when lit up.

This in Manfred, the Jr Sous Chef/Chef Tournant at Al Mahara. He's from Austria n his girlfriend Jana is from Czech Rep. Jana n I have met up a couple of times, for coffee or to go to the beach.

Here’s the kitchen team of Al Mahara restaurant.

1-Ansgar, Sous Chef (Germany); 2-Darrell, Chef de Cuisine (Australia); 3-Benjamin, Sous Chef (Singapore); 4-Ashish, Commis Cook (India); 5-Wang, Wok Chef (China); 6-Tinnakorn, Jr Sous Chef (Thailand); 7-Manfred, Jr Sous Chef (Austria); 8-Peter, Commis Cook (Goa); 9-Amir, Demi Chef (Malaysia); 10-Olivia, Pastry Chef (Korea); 11-Andrew, Commis Cook (Germany); 12- ?; 13- ?; 14- ?; 15- ?; 16- ?; 17-Simon (China); 18- ?

I had my kind of celebration at home. I turned down Jana's offer to go out n watch the fireworks by the beach ‘cos I wanted to stay home n watch Harry Potter! Yeah… nerdus maximus. But shiok what… They were showing The Philosopher’s Stone and The Chamber of Secrets back to back from 11pm. Harry Potter movie marathon! Would have been better if they showed all four back to back, but this is Dubai local TV so I should just be grateful that it wasn't dubbed in Arabic.

On New Year's Day, Ben worked the early shift (8am - 5pm), so we went for a movie after that. Saw III. Pretty gory movie to start a new year, but Ben loved it of course. Movie tickets here cost 35 dirhams each. So movie for 2 plus popcorn+drink comes up to almost 100 dirhams (S$40plus)!

Ben worked the early shift on Christmas Day too till 6pm, so we went for a buffet dinner at JW Marriott that night. The spread was pretty good at first... cos the starters were excellent... sushi, sashimi, oysters, salmon gravlax... Then we went on to mains, quite good too - they had roast turkey & roast beef at the carving stations, and Ben loved the turkey stuffing.

Also, grilled crayfish (which they labelled as "lobsters") and scampi. The desserts were a real letdown. Minced pie...yuck! Christmas pudding...yuck! They even managed to make chocolate mousse yucky!

The restaurant played piped in Arabic music so Ben asked the waiter why they weren't playing Christmas carols since it was after all, Christmas Day, and we were having a Christmas buffet. The waiter just gave us a blur look n was like, "uhh...ah...err...". But anyway, with or without carols, decor etc, Christmas just isn't Christmas-sy here, and Dubai just can't do Christmas. We found out why after dinner.

These buggers killed Santa.