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!