Memories of a Year

It is with a deep sense of loss that I share with you this tragic fact: My memory isn’t what it once was. I used to be able to read a novel in an afternoon and regurgitate even the smallest details months later. Now I read twelve e-mails in the morning and I’ve forgotten them all by noon. That may be a subconscious avoidance mechanism, since some of those e-mails probably contained tasks I was supposed to do; nevertheless, I can no longer rely on my memory alone to safeguard the information that is most important to me. With that in mind, and with the end of my year in Singapore looming just ahead, I have decided to dredge my uncooperative mind for the memories I am not willing to let dissipate and fade over time.

These are just some of the moments that kept me going through homesickness, frustration, and tedium; the moments that made me appreciate my blessings and feel affirmed in my choice of job; these are the moments that matter. Here are ten of the highlights from my year of teaching abroad.

1) Less than a month after I arrived in Singapore (October 2013), I was invited to join my colleagues in a soccer tournament pitting teachers from different Junior Colleges against each other. This was the first time I really felt a sense of camaraderie and acceptance in Singapore, although I realized a little too late that shouting at my superiors like I would my teammates in the States was kind of stupid. Thankfully Catholic Junior College placed fourth overall, for the first time in the school’s history, so in the general euphoria my gaffe was forgiven. That tournament was only the first of many mornings spent kicking a soccer ball around with my colleagues, and the year would have been a lot worse without them. I won’t be taking much luggage back to America from Singapore, but I wouldn’t dream of leaving behind my 4^th-place trophy and the memories attached to it.

2) It took quite a bit of administrative sleight of hand, but the Literature department was able to organize a trip for the students to see Shakespeare in the Park. We saw a wonderful performance of The Merchant of Venice, with the setting updated to resemble modern Singapore (complete with tablets and iPhones and clubs playing techno). Along with some of the other teachers, I was invited to stand on stage during Shylock’s courtroom scene. Afterwards one of the students exclaimed “Mr. O, you rock!” I know, the purpose was to convince them that Shakespeare rocks… but I count it as a win anyway (full disclosure: they no longer thought I ‘rocked’ after receiving their first essays backs. You can’t win ‘em all…). Also, life-long dream of acting in a Shakespeare play? Realized.

3) One of my goals for the year was to stay in shape, which I knew would be a challenge with the long hours required of teachers in Singaporean Junior Colleges. But I had more opportunities to exercise than many of my colleagues, since I was assigned as one of the Teachers-In-Charge (a Singaporean title) of the Track & Field team. Halfway through the year there was a big Cross Country race, one for students and one for faculty, and I was eager to establish my bona fides. My rival was the head Teacher-In-Charge, a former Singaporean National Champion, who ran regularly but was about a decade older than me. I kept assuring people that I couldn’t beat him, while thinking to myself: “Just maybe…” Long story short, he kicked my ass. But that remains my first full-length cross-country race, and I’ll wear my silver medal with (slightly bruised) pride.

4) When I arrived at Incheon Airport in December 2013, freezing and bleary-eyed, my friend Sang Hwan was there to meet me, even though he’d had to wake up around 3am and travel a few hours to the airport. From that moment until the day I left Seoul two weeks later, I was surrounded by the greatest friends anybody could imagine (Sungik, thanks again to you and your father for taking me in on Christmas day!). Some people travel for new experiences – food or adventure or scenery – but I think I will always plan my future travels around the friends I can meet at my destination.

5) Every now and again I would bring a few beers over to my neighbor’s apartment, who also worked at Catholic Junior College and shared my interest in sci-fi, fantasy, and the inestimable Joss Whedon. We would make some popcorn and watch Firefly, trying really hard not to complain about our students (we didn’t try that hard). Living alone in a new country while trying to navigate an unfamiliar job was neither straightforward nor stress-free, and I was very lucky to be able to rely on the best neighbor, colleague, and friend a guy could ask for. Thanks for everything, Jess!

6) Somehow or other I came to know a group of expat teachers (and one Australian dentist). They became some of my best friends in Singapore, and we would often hang out on the weekends and play poker – they welcomed me into the group and took my money. No teacher can survive without a space to relieve stress, and pizza, beer, and cards with Imran, Matt, Chris, James and (sometimes) Kelsey was the best way I ever found of ending a rough week.

7) My Friday nights weren’t always cards and beer – sometimes they were singing (and beer). Sometimes the Poker Crowd, plus the ladies who more often than not seemed to pass on poker, would go to a karaoke joint downtown and belt out tunes until the wee hours. I learned about a few Scottish bands, dusted off my repertoire of 90s R&B, and rediscovered my middle-school years by crooning along with the Backstreet Boys. Clarke Quay Society, I will miss you guys.

8) From my previous highlights, it may seem that my brightest moments in Singapore all happened when I wasn’t teaching – but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. There was a great deal of frustration involved (as I think is true for any teacher who truly cares about improving his or her craft), but the successes more than make up for everything else. I discovered this after delivering my first lecture to the entire Literature cohort (maybe 120 students) on the similarities between Heath Ledger’s Joker and Iago from Othello. It was the product of most of a weekend spent hashing out my thoughts and trying to express them in a way that would be accessible to the students, yet of practical use to them. I was beyond gratified when they stayed awake (watching the Joker mess with Batman is a good attention-getter, I found), and some even took notes! Even better was when a student approached me after the lecture to ask if it was symbolically significant that, in the final scene of Othello, Othello strangles Desdemona instead of killing her some other way. “Yes!” I practically yelled, a little carried away by the fact that a student had been generating questions while paying attention. “It IS significant! He silences her! Do you see? Do you see the symbolic beauty of this murder? Do you?!” And she really did, even if she was also backing away slowly from the crazy teacher.

9) Umar, my roommate for most of 2013, had to leave Singapore at the end of the year. He is an amazing guy who went out of his way to help me get used to a new place, and I was really sad to see him go. In order to make the most of our last few days together, we embarked on an epic journey of discovery around Singapore. First we had a Swedish brunch (not entirely sure why, but it was delicious), and then visited Universal Studios on Sentosa. We were also able to take a day trip to the beautiful island of Pulau Ubin, where you can rent bicycles and see a bit of what Singapore looked like before it became the ever-developing city it is now. We saw wild boars and raced wild dogs, then wandered along a raised wooden path over the bay in time to catch the sunset. Was it a little too much like a date weekend? Maybe. Was it awesome? Yes, it was. Keep doing what you’re doing, Umar, and I hope to see you in the UK some day!

10) I was an emotional wreck in the week leading up to my students’ exam results. “Did I not prepare them enough?” I kept thinking. “If I had had more experience, would they have fared better? WHY DID I LEAVE IN THAT TYPO IN MY REVIEW SHEET, DAMN IT?!” But when my students got their exam results back they were all right, and some even exceeded their own expectations for Literature. Modest language to describe the end of the year, I know – but I think that’s part of what it means to be a teacher. You can ALWAYS do better as a teacher, but no matter how hard you work, there’s no secret process to enable your students to master Shakespeare or spin sentences of pure gold. Still, there are sometimes pure successes, when you see the lightbulb go off over a student’s head or you witness someone overcome a hurdle that he’d been struggling with for a while. And when moments like that happen during final exams, which in Singapore go a very long way towards determining a student’s future, it’s a moment of affirmation for students and teacher alike. I miss my students terribly already and I wish them all possible success at A-Levels next year. I hope they know that in spite of my somewhat sarcastic classroom demeanor and general air of frazzled desperation as exams neared, I was beyond grateful to get to teach them this year. 

Some Thoughts on Shakespeare's Othello

I have spent the majority of the last year teaching Othello, so I thought I should attempt to clarify some of my thoughts on the play, now that I’ve spent so much time wrestling with the issues it raises. In the future I may separate my blog posts about literature from blog posts about food or travel or education, but at the moment I have so few blog posts of any kind that I figure I might as well chuck this out into the void of the Internet without any fancy adornment. Enjoy, and feel free to hit me up with questions or your own theories about Shakespeare/literature/the nature of the universe. Don’t read while operating heavy machinery!

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In Act I of Othello, Iago instructs Roderigo to “plague [Brabantio] with flies. Though that his joy be joy,/ throw some vexation on’t,/ As it may lose some colour.” This is precisely my dilemma when reading Shakespeare’s Othello, because my pleasure in reading the play is tempered by the fact that it still confuses the heck out of me.

It is Iago, usually considered the villain of the play, who throws the most ‘vexation’ on my enjoyment of Othello. Is Iago a Machiavellian villain? Is he a would-be mastermind ironically brought low by his own wife? How does his final silence affect our understanding of the play’s ending, or the play as a whole? These are only some of the questions I posed to my literature students during the course of the past year, always painfully aware that I could not answer them myself.

If I wish to clarify what has long bothered me about the play, and more specifically about the purpose Iago serves, I need to return to the basics: dramatic techniques. For me, a central failure of many critical approaches to Othello lies in their treatment of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony, as most of us who have read Shakespeare in high school know, occurs when the audience knows more about the play’s direction or a character’s intentions than one or more of the actual characters – think Dr. Evil laying out his plans in great detail, or the underwater camera capturing the shark in Jaws as it approaches the dangling legs of its unwitting victim.

In Othello, dramatic irony occurs very clearly whenever Iago speaks in asides or soliloquies, revealing his intentions and providing commentary on his own manipulations. “Thus do I ever make my fool my purse,” Iago tells us after convincing the gullible Roderigo to continue pursuing Desdemona. In moments like this, Iago offers the audience a blueprint for his self-serving machinations. “Look at me; look at what I’m about to do,” is essentially the message we receive. And once the deed is done: “See what I did there?”

Dramatic irony is a simple technique with profound effects. One of my colleagues claims that the force of tragedy, indeed its very essence, boils down to the profound pull of dramatic irony on an audience’s emotions. We do not watch Oedipus or Othello because we think their protagonists may escape their tragic fate; on the contrary, we see their doom approaching, we edge forward in our seats as the inevitable moment nears, and we derive a perplexing but undeniable pleasure from witnessing the culmination of a dramatic arc we are powerless to change.

If a student manages to identify an example of dramatic irony (one of Iago’s soliloquies, say) and evaluate its effect on an audience, he is already exceeding expectations; a few bright students, however, rightly pointed out to me the fundamental weirdness of dramatic irony. “Why is he telling the audience his plans?” they ask, and it is an excellent question. It leads directly to a productive discussion about the purpose of dramatic irony in theater, its intended effects and unintended consequences, and whether it is a necessary weapon in a playwright’s arsenal.

Is dramatic irony a theatrical crutch, meant to enable an uneducated audience to follow the plot? Is it a necessary reminder that what happens on stage is a representation of reality and not reality in itself (for in reality, talking to an audience we’re not sure exists is a sign of either madness or religion), or is it a clunky but pragmatic workaround that the innovations of modern theater have rendered obsolete?

It seems to me that, no matter what else it does, dramatic irony raises the important question of audience privilege. In Shakespeare’s time, there were very few tragedies that did not expose their inner workings to the audience’s eager eye. To watch a play was to possess a form of privileged sight, perhaps of insight, into the overarching dramatic structure that eluded the mere characters on stage.

Not all tragedy hinges on dramatic irony, of course, and more modern innovations in drama and prose often require the audience to discover the “truth” right alongside the characters (Megan Whalen Turner’s excellent young adult novel The Thief, for example, manages to hoodwink the reader until the finale). But to the extent that audiences expect soliloquies, asides, and other vehicles of dramatic irony in the theater, we take for granted the privilege to see beyond the surface of things to the underlying truth. We think that elevated perception is our privilege, even to the extent of “seeing” the future in the form of the tragedy’s inevitable conclusion.

From our perch of privileged perception, critics are all too comfortable pointing out Othello’s blindness. “He mistakes evidence for proof,” we say, citing the unfortunate incident with the handkerchief. “His perception is flawed.” This may be true, but it creates a false distinction between Othello’s tragic flaw and the audience’s imagined clarity. “Poor Othello,” we say, shaking our heads with condescending sympathy, “if only he hadn’t taken Iago at his word.” Even critics who treat Othello with more sympathy often believe that with a little close reading, a little inference, they can “figure Iago out” – get to the truth behind the lies.

The audience wishes to divide the world between those whom Iago has deceived and those who “see through him” – not surprisingly, the audience is the only group to profit by the comparison. Only the audience is aware of Iago’s plan for the entire play, thanks to the revelatory power of dramatic irony... or so the theory goes. But in the end the joke is on us.

In spite of Iago’s declaration “I am not what I am,” critics have persisted in their attempts to see past Iago’s misdirection in order to find the ‘truth’ of him, what Iago calls the “native act and figure of my heart.” These attempts have provided a number of fascinating theories ranging from Iago-as-motiveless-psychopath to Iago-in-love-with-Othello. But none of these theories address the climactic moment in the final scene, when Iago shuts out the audience as surely as his captors: “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know./ From this time forth I never will speak word” (V.ii.300-301).

From the opening scene Iago has reserved his most candid moments for the audience, whether offering insight into the formation of his plans (“I have’t! It is engendered!”) or commenting on the status of those plans (“The Moor changes already with my poison”). Following this pattern, we might expect some measure of closure from Iago, either gloating or lamenting. What we get instead is… silence.

Iago effectively shuts us out, and for an audience accustomed to hearing Iago’s words when no one else does, the effect ought to be similar to a bucket of ice water to the face. Our privilege is abruptly stripped away, leaving us no closer to the truth than the bumbling Venetians.

Dramatic irony fails us, indeed it actively tricks us, as Iago reveals that his illusion of transparency was, in the words of a Venetian Senator, a “pageant to keep us in false gaze.” At the very moment Iago refuses to speak, the audience realizes that we are no better off than Roderigo, the poor sap who believes for most of the play that Iago is lying to everyone else but him.

Iago freely concedes that “I am not what I am”, yet his audience (whether it is Roderigo, Othello, or the audience in the theater) persists in the belief that Iago’s much-vaunted “honesty” is reserved for them alone. Iago’s rhetoric consistently relies on the message, “I am lying to everyone else but you”; however, the message underlying this refrain is clearly, “I am lying to you.” This declaration, like the phrase “I am not what I am,” moves beyond mere deception into the realm of logical paradox. Each phrase contradicts itself, and this impossible duality creates an endless circulation of meaning that defies efforts to constrain it within an intelligible system.

Iago’s silence strips us of our pretensions and shatters our belief that we see clearly where Othello does not. In so doing, that silence also represents Shakespeare’s self-aware treatment of the effects of dramatic irony on an audience. It is astonishing to me how many critics experience Iago’s resounding silence – the abrupt termination of dramatic irony – and persist in believing that an audience is free from Othello’s blindness and vulnerability to deception. We are aligned more closely with the Moor of Venice than most of us are willing to acknowledge.

There are many questions left to answer about the play itself, many tensions that remain unresolved. In order to grapple with them, however, we must first acknowledge the flawed nature of our vision, and consequently the limits placed on our knowledge. Iago’s final words include the parting jab, “What you know, you know” – if we fail to examine what we actually “know,” to question how we came to “know” it, then we leave the theater as deluded as Othello himself. 

A Year Measured in Food

A Year Measured In Food

I still can’t believe I’ve been in Singapore for a year. My blog has suffered from inattention over the last twelve months, as has the cleanliness of my apartment. But I’ve grown a bit, learned a little, and eaten a lot. I mean a LOT. My twelve months here have not made me an expert on food or Singapore, but I can safely say that I’ve eaten my way through hawker centers, restaurants, and kopitiams (like outdoor coffeeshops) from one side of the island to the other. And now that my time in the Little Red Dot is coming to an end, I thought it high time I pay homage to some of the foods that have sustained me through the ups and downs of my first year as a teacher. Note that this is not a particularly representative or balanced list, nor does it cover all of the local foods for which Singapore is justly famous. I simply chose the ten foods that I eat most often (with the lone exception of chili crab, which I would eat more often if it weren’t so darn expensive), and food that I will miss the most when I finally head back to the states. All of these are available in most hawker centers, with certain variations. With that little disclaimer, on to the food!

10) Chicken Rice

Sounds simple, right? Wrong. The nondescript name might fool one into thinking that this is a meal a lazy bachelor like myself could easily reproduce with a pair of chicken breasts and a rice cooker, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. True chicken rice features steamed chicken that has been “blanched,” or dipped into cold water after cooking to give it a particular texture. The chicken is then chopped and laid over rice, but not just any rice; this rice has been infused with the fat from the chicken, making it an unhealthy but addictive indulgence. Serve with long slices of cucumber, bok choy, chili sauce, and dark soy sauce, and you’ve got a meal that will comfort you on your darkest day.

9) Chili Crab

A famous Singaporean dish that costs an arm and a leg, and may take the remaining limb when you start waving around the crab clamps. Nonetheless, I guarantee you’ve never tasted anything like chili crab sauce, which I could eat on rice every day and still be happy. There are a few other famous types of crab, such as black pepper crab, but chili crab is the best in my book. Bring your bib, a full wallet, and a bottle of beer, and you’re in for a fantastic meal.

8) Sliced Fish Soup

A healthier option than most on this list, although you should be wary of the amount of MSG, sodium, and other delicious additives that are common in hawker food. This soup is pretty much what it sounds like, though you can customize with seaweed, tomato, egg, and tofu. If you’re feeling sick or you’ve had a rough day, I recommend swapping fried fish for the sliced fish and adding condensed milk to the broth – fish soup to comfort the soul. It would be perfect to warm you up on a cold day… if Singapore had cold days.

7) Chinese Rice (sometimes known as Economy Rice)

Chinese food in the US (or at least, in my college town) was known for being rather expensive and pretty gosh-darn terrible. In Singapore neither of those things are true. Here you can order Chinese food for a fraction of the US price, and it tastes so good that I can and have eaten it twice in one day. This is an MSG-heavy dish, but when it comes to Singapore hawker food, MSG stands for “MMMM, So Good!!!”

6) Yong Tau Foo

Otherwise known as Choice Paralysis, featuring a variety of vegetables, tofu products, fried dumplings, and various other delights. With six choices minimum and an additional 50 cents a piece, there’s a lot of room for customization. Once you choose your ingredients and your choice of starch (there are three types of noodles to choose from, and rice of course), everything is boiled together in a rich fish-based broth. The meal can be served dry, as a soup, or slathered in a mouth-watering curry gravy. (Challenge for the mathematically minded – if I said that there were 30 different base ingredients and you wanted to order 6, plus one starch, how many unique types of Yong Tau Foo could you create? Hint: More days than I’ve lived in Singapore, that’s for damn certain.)

5) Ayam Penyet

It has been said that the measure of a country’s greatness is the measure of its fried chicken (if it hasn’t been said, I say it now). From my limited experience I can testify to the greatness of America, South Korea, Botswana, and now Indonesia and Singapore. “Ayam Penyet” means “smashed chicken” in Malay, and that’s exactly what it is: chicken breasts that are tenderized in a not-so-tender way (think of the culinary version of Thor’s Hammer), then fried, placed over rice, and served with a sweet soy sauce derivative and a SPICY chili sauce that never fails to clear my sinuses. This is a student (and teacher) favorite at my school’s canteen, where you can get a rib-sticking ayam penyet set for less than four Singaporean dollars.

4) Kaya Toast Set

I can’t really explain kaya, except to say that I think its original name was ambrosia. Buy/steal/smuggle a jar of Hainanese kaya and try it with butter on toast, and you’ll never go back (to jam or marmalade or whatever sad bread spread you used to rely on before I enlightened you). A traditional breakfast in Singapore features kaya toast, two soft-boiled eggs with dark soy sauce, and either kopi or teh (coffee or tea, as you’ve probably guessed, but so unlike their Western counterparts that they deserve their own names). There are many variations on the traditional breakfast, but all of them start your day off with a full stomach and a sugar high.

3) Claypot Rice

Not a single meal so much as a way of life, Claypot stalls boil down different mixtures into a stew-like consistency, then serve them bubbling hot in a traditional claypot with a side of rice to soak in all the deliciousness. My favorite so far is sesame chicken, which has a rich flavor that draws on the sesame oil, onions, and chicken broth to create something truly beautiful. You will get sauce everywhere as you try to consume every last bit of chicken using only chopsticks and a spoon… but it will be worth it. I promise you.

2) Prata

Prata is essentially fried dough, except it can come with a variety of add-ins including eggs, bananas, and chocolate. No matter what the flavor, prata is served with a bowl of curry (either chicken or fish-based), and sometimes sugar on the side. At first I was a little leery of adding curry to what I thought of as a dessert or a decadent sort of fried breakfast, but I got over that before I finished chewing the first bite. Excellent for breakfast, lunch, dinner, a midnight snack, or anything in between, prata is a most versatile (and sinful) food.

1) Murtabak

Murtabak takes the concept of prata to the next level. You have a base of delicious fried dough with a crispy exterior? Great – now wrap it around a simmering mixture of onions and minced meat, eat it with curry and green tea to cut the grease, and wait for your food coma to arrive. I think that beef murtabak is my favorite to date, although I’ve also had chicken and (once) mutton murtabak. Fried dough, grilled meat and onions, and curry – if that’s not a recipe for happiness, I don’t know what is.

Chasin' Paper

I have now been living in Singapore for almost a month, and I’ve learned a few things.  First and foremost, air conditioning is the greatest invention since the printing press.  Second, since geckos eat mosquitos and spiders, they are your best friends and you should always welcome them, even if they insist on lurking in your bathroom at night, then leap into violent motion just as you lift your tired eyes to look in the mirror.

Yes, I’ve been picking up life lessons left and right.  I’ve also spent the last week at my school, Catholic Junior College, learning the ins and outs of teaching in Singapore.  Although I’m not teaching classes yet (the students are in their exam period leading up to the end of the year in December), my Head of Department was kind enough to entrust me with a task of vital importance to the direction of the College as a whole: paperwork.

Last Friday, I received a stack of five hundred detailed reports on students’ extra-curricular activities.  Since these reports go out to parents, the school needs teachers with a good handle on English grammar to correct them.  Determined to make a good first impression, I approached the reports with the dedication of a sheepdog and the fastidiousness of a hairdresser, ready to herd errant clauses and snip any modifiers dangling where they weren’t wanted.

My zeal lasted about five minutes.  The exhaustive inventory of my future students’ contributions to society was riddled with complicated sentence structures that were invariably wrong, yet stubbornly defied my efforts to fix them.  Furthermore, it was clear that most of the reports had been adapted from a single template, because I corrected virtually identical sentences literally hundreds of times.

I even began labeling the recurring grammar mistakes in my mind.  In fact, some of them I came to despise in a deeply personal and possibly unprofessional way.

My inner monologue went something like this:  “I hate you, Subject-Verb Disagreement in Stock Sentence #3 About Community Service in Bangladesh!  I want to take you out behind the garbage dump in a burlap sack and beat you with a stick!”

Mike crosses out two words with his red pen, then snorts angrily and crosses them out again.  He takes up the next paper on the stack in front of him.  Two seconds later…

“Go die in a hole, Incorrect Preposition in Stock Sentence #5 About the Mathematical Society!  Your mother was a superfluous semicolon and your father reeked of split infinitives!”

Grading these reports did more than threaten my sanity and raise my blood pressure, however; it taught me that what I hate, what I despise more than almost anything in the world, is an overachiever.  Not for me the Student Council Vice-President who plays three instruments and dedicates his every weekend to rebuilding orphanages in Cambodia.  The extra-curricular report for a child like that (let’s call him Mervin) is likely to be a full page, single-spaced, with more sentences in need of editing than there are grains of sand in the desert.

But the rare slacker, now… there was a true blessing.  Every now and again, though not often enough, I would take up a new report, only to find one short, sweet sentence: “This page is intentionally left blank as the student did not meet the participation requirements.”

“Yes!” I exclaim, overcome by a rush of morally questionable joy.  “Bless you, child!  The record of your utter lack of contribution to your school or your community is both beautifully concise and grammatically flawless.  Oh, well done!”

...I realize that my post thus far has basically been one long complaint.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still extremely excited for this job.  As an example, I sat in on a class today led by a veteran Lit teacher from Ireland, and afterward I was raring to go.  David is everything I want to be as a teacher: he recited critical passages from Othello in a booming voice, brandished a broom handle to portray Iago trying to kill his wife, and translated the Shakespearean word “fie” into its closest Singaporean equivalent: “Wha’ la?!”  I swear, I wouldn’t have been surprised if David’s hair – which is white and wispy – puffed out like Einstein’s, struck not by lightning, but by the sheer static force of his academic fervor.

Alas, I am not yet able to impress upon Singapore’s youth the brilliance of Shakespeare or Dickinson.  What I can do, for the moment, is complain about paperwork.  But I’m in good company, for my fellow teachers assure me that complaining is the national sport of Singapore, and Singapore’s teachers are its Olympic athletes.

In the end, although I would like to get up in front of a class, the paperwork really isn’t that bad.  At least it makes me feel like I’m doing something to earn my salary.  As the American rapper and venerable wordsmith Plies says in his song, “I Chase Paper”:

All I do is paper chase

Ion’t got time, I can’t wait,

‘Cause I need millions on my plate!

My paper may be lined and perforated instead of green and covered with dead presidents, but at least I’ve got a lot of it on my plate!

The First Day

With two connecting flights and a layover in Seoul, it took around 22 hours to travel from New York to Singapore.  All things considered the trip was a miracle of international travel, replete with every comfort and convenience (including an impressive amount of wine), but not even Korean Air can overcome jet lag.  So when I rubbed the sleep from red-rimmed eyes at 5am local time my first morning in Singapore, I was hardly ready to greet the day.  I fear I didn't make the best first impression on my flatmate Umar, a fellow international teacher from Britain who certainly didn't deserve to deal with my grouchy, jet-lagged self all day.  But he bore the pain with unfailing courtesy, and even took me on a tour of some of Singapore's showier attractions, on the grounds that once school started we wouldn't have time to think, let alone play tourist.  And I discovered, once I stopped focusing on how exhausted and grumpy I was, that the hype is all true: Singapore is one hell of a place.

I saw too much to talk about it all here, but the highlight of the tour was unquestionably the Gardens by the Bay, a collection of three parks built entirely on reclaimed land.  Our goal that first night was to see the Supertrees, a grove of vertical gardens built to resemble giant trees, which use technology to mimic the ecological functions of trees (I thought that the only function of trees was to provide shade, and that they could be easily replaced by a building or an umbrella, but my more scientifically inclined classmates have told me that I'm mistaken... and also that I'm an idiot).  The Supertrees have water catchment technology, air intake and purification, photovoltaic cells, and - I'm sure - a squad of Superhamsters running on wheels to generate electricity.

Every night the grove of Supertrees puts on a light show, and thanks to Umar's master plan, we arrived just in time to see it.  Beautiful, unearthly music filled the air, and the trees lit up with a multitude of colors that flashed and changed with the song.  It was unlike anything I've ever seen - while watching it, you could forget that you were in a bustling metropolis known for its technology and banking, and think that you were in another world.

In fact, my inner geek was having a field day, convinced that I had somehow been transported to the lush jungle world of Pandora.  I had to concentrate to keep from looking around nervously, worried that mercenary gunships were coming to destroy the Hometrees.

All in all it was an amazing night, and I can see already that Singapore is a gift to the imagination.  As I settle in and become less of a tourist, I hope I don't lose the sense of wonder that I've experienced during my first few days here.  After wrangling with the Ministries of Education and Manpower over my Employment Pass and other bureaucratic necessities, it's easy to see how I could begin to take this city for granted, and focus only on the little annoyances.  That would be a shame, because even from the little that I've seen so far, Singapore is a breathtakingly beautiful city, and I am so incredibly lucky to be able to live here for a while.

Live to Eat

I’ve been researching Singaporean culture in preparation for the upcoming year, and from what I’ve seen, food plays a crucial role.  Various food-related activities such as eating, talking about food, listening to people talk about food, and blogging about where to go for the best food, all seem to take up an inordinate amount of your average Singaporean’s time. 

Since I myself spend the majority of each day thinking about what I have eaten, am eating, or will be eating in the near future, I cannot but applaud Singapore. There are classy restaurants, bars, and diners aplenty, and street food like you've never seen before in the form of Singapore’s world-famous hawker centers.  Hell’s Kitchen chef Gordon Ramsay even challenged several hawker chefs to a cook-off recently, and they won by popular vote.  

http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2013/07/08/gordon-ramsay-defeated-by-singapore-hawkers

Not only that, but hawker food is eminently affordable - you can get a full meal in most hawker centers for the price of a slice of pizza in New York.

Sounds pretty good, right?  Well guess what, Singapore... I'm not impressed.  I hail from Rochester, New York, and we're no slacks in the cuisine department.  Unfortunately, our culinary expertise is not well known internationally (to be fair, it's not well known in the US either, including many areas of Rochester).  Nevertheless, I bristle in patriotic defense every time I hear someone say that the food in Rochester is garbage.  

"Excuse me," I say, walking right up to the aforementioned hypothetical food critic, "but you're dead wrong.  Our food is in no way affiliated with refuse, rubbish, or trash!"

"Oh yeah," retorts Mr. Wise Guy Critic, "then why is Rochester's only identifiable contribution to world cuisine called a Garbage Plate?!"

Well... damn.  He's got me there.  It is true that our signature dish, the meal that put us on the map (although that might actually have been our crime rate), is called the garbage plate.  But you know what?  It's tasty!  And the garbage plate has a long and storied history, one that can match anything the Singaporeans talk about on their food blogs.  I've done a little research to support this claim, so kick back, grab a beer, and please read the following on an empty stomach.  This is the story of the garbage plate.

Back in the day (around 1918 or thereabouts), Nick Tahou opened a restaurant in Rochester called Hots and Potatoes. There was one dish on the menu that had essentially everything you could cook in the kitchen, all put on one plate to become an affordable meal that would stay with you approximately until your next paycheck.  Nick's son inherited the restaurant (now called Nick Tahou's) and created the classic garbage plate that we still love today, which consists of two cheeseburgers over a bed of macaroni salad and home fries, liberally covered by a melange (that's french for big mess) of meat sauce, ketchup, and mustard.

Other restaurants quickly jumped on the bandwagon, realizing that garbage plates were the perfect item for drunk college students on a Top-Secret Food-Finding Mission between midnight and 4:00am (I don't know about you, but I've certainly been there).  It is unknown what precise thoughts went through the mind of the first student to try a garbage plate, but it probably went something like this:

Drunk College Student: Whoa... when I throw up this food in about 40 minutes, it's going to look exactly the same!!! ...awesome...

And the rest, as they say, is history.  In more recent times, garbage plates have become a part of our cultural heritage - in many high schools, for example, the successful consumption of an entire garbage plate is a coming-of-age ritual signifying that a boy has become a man.  Since my family moved to Rochester before my junior year of high school, I experienced a good deal of culture shock when I realized what was expected of me.  "I'm supposed to eat that?!" was my sentiment.  With time and perseverance, however, I came to relish the excitement, the danger even, of downing a plate and subsequently wondering whether I was going to projectile vomit over everyone in my US History class.  It was like a game of Russian Roulette, except if I lost, so did everyone else...

But enough of that trip down memory lane.  I only indulge in it now because soon enough, my memories will be the only place where I can savor the sweet, sweet taste of a garbage plate.  For exactly that reason, earlier this evening I went to my hometown's equivalent of a hawker center: the infamous Hungry's Grill.  Before you ask, yes, there is a bar next door called Thirsty's.  We are nothing if not a pragmatic people, we Rochesterians (Rochester-ites?  Rochestinians? Ah, screw it).

It was the best garbage plate I have ever eaten - seasoned, perhaps, by the bitter but poignant knowledge of my imminent departure to a land where food is not compared to garbage, even in jest.

As I sit here digesting, I begin to feel a deep sense of peace and tranqui- bleeurgh.

...Whew.  Hey, you know what?  That drunk college student was right - it really does look the same as before!