Daily Archives: April 16, 2016

Asia, Cooking, Family, Travel

Eating

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Spring                                                        Wedding Moon

relish4A lot of our visit to Singapore has revolved around eating. Yesterday morning we met Anita.  Anita offered prayers at her temple for me during my prostate surgery last year, is a long time colleague of Mary’s. She’s writing a book about her community, Indians from Kerala but living for a long time in Singapore. We had breakfast at Relish, a restaurant close to Mary’s apartment.

Lunch was Mary, Kate and I at Miyabi, a Japanese restaurant on the second floor of the Raffles Town Club. Excellent food. Authentic Japanese decor and seating. One side room I noticed was named Fu Yu. Not shorthand, I’m sure, as it would be in English.

tanglin tavernIn the evening a friend of Mary’s treated us to a pub meal in the Tanglin Club, the oldest such club in Singapore, founded in 1865. The Tavern and Fireplace, where we ate, replicates an English pub. I had fish and chips with vinegar on the fries. Just right. These clubs began as old style English gentlemen’s clubs, a bit of home in the tropics. The Tanglin apparently was started for English rubber plantation owners and their colleagues.

hash hikingWe learned about Hash hiking from Mary’s friend. This partial headline from the Guardian gives you the central point: “…a club that takes drinking as seriously as running.” Here are two websites: the guardian article and one from expat go. Though it started in Malaysia among expats concerned about staying trim while drinking plenty of beer, it’s quirky style has given it an international presence.

Including, I discovered easily, several Colorado clubs.

 

Asia, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Hot and Cold

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Spring                                                              Wedding Moon

The oddities of traveling. On Wednesday Kate and I walked from the Botanic Garden MRT stop to its Visitor Centre, maybe halfway across this large park, a Unesco World Heritage Site. We knew it was hot, our bodies told us at every step with an oppressive clamping feeling as the humidity and the heat forced out sweat but didn’t allow it to cool us down.

We learned on Friday that this was the hottest day in a decade, 36.7 centigrade or 98.06F. The hottest temperature every recorded here is only .3 degrees warmer, 37. Kate recognized that one immediately as 98.6. The difference between this heat and Colorado heat, which can reach well over a 100, is the humidity which has stayed mostly in the 95% range and the dewpoint, also very high.

Meanwhile back home a huge late winter snowstorm headed toward Colorado. The foothills were smack in the middle of the highest forecasted snowfalls, 1-3 feet, with some predicting as much as 4 feet. Odd junction. Last I looked Conifer Mountain, across the valley from us, had 32 inches with another foot on the way. Since this is spring, it’s a very heavy snow, but it will melt fast, long before we get home on Thursday.

Today in Singapore it’s 84 now, headed toward 93, feels like 110 (not kidding).