(And why are you not?)

Some mornings, in the early seconds before wakefulness, I see in my mind a hot bowl of hei mee — prawn noodles. The bright yellow noodles in a pastel blue plastic bowl, swimming with shelled prawns, fried onions, and deep fried pork lard in steaming hot brown soup. And then I can almost smell it — the onions, the prawns and the lard in hei mee. But then I awake to find myself miles away from anything like it. In those moments, I really miss being in Singapore. It’s so cliche for an overseas Singaporean to talk about missing Singaporean food. I don’t even know why I think of hei mee, since it’s not anywhere on my list of favourite foods. But when I was still a kid with dorky glasses and a bowl-like haircut, my mother would wake me on Sunday mornings and take me to Whampoa to slurp up my Sundays’ hei mee. I guess that explains it. But why am I still here in Shanghai?

Opportunities

They’re here. They’re growing, and they’re here to stay. Eyes are on China, most are set on Shanghai.

Costs/Choices

Cost of living in Shanghai is not low, but choices are available to stretch your dollar, or your RMB, so to speak.

Clothes

Why buy clothes, shoes and accessories from the boutiques or department stores when you can get imported/to-be-exported clothes at the Qipu Lu Wholesale Market? Or get your shirt/pants/dress/suit tailor-made out of your own designs at Lujiabang Fabric Market?

Entertainment

Pirated DVDs: 5－9RMB depending on quality.

Pirated Wii Games: 5RMB

Pirated Software: 10 - ? RMB

Pirated Books: 10 - ? RMB depending on size, thickness, hardcover/paperback

Movies: Varies for different cinemas and titles. But generally, cheap in the mornings, half price on Tuesdays and after 10pm everyday

Bank

The minimum amount to have in your savings account before the bank starts to charge a fee is 500RMB. If you don’t have at least 500RMB, the bank will deduct 2RMB from your account every month you don’t hit the minimum.

In Singapore? It’s S$500 and S$2.

Transportation

Buses: 2-4RMB depending on distance

Metro: 3-6RMB depending on distance

Taxi: Starting fare at 12RMB, therafter 2.40RMB per km or equivalent waiting time. Midnight surcharge starts at 11pm, with the meter starting at 16RMB and the fare hikes by 30%. No surcharge for booking a taxi other than from dazhong company (charges 4RMB).

Very useful tip: You can haggle with taxi drivers after 11pm for a 20% discount if your journey is fairly long, and if taxis are in abundance where you are.

Everything

Accessories, clothes, shoes, books, software, computers, cameras, photo printing services, snacks, dog food, cat food, dog clothes, cat clothes, anything can be purchased on TAOBAO.COM and delivered to your doorstep! It is also currently my new past time.

Convenience

The months of winter are the hardest to leave the house. To gear myself for the almost unbearable Shanghai winter, I apply moisturizer to my face, slather it all over my body (it’s necessary for it to really be ALL over). I wear leggings, pants, a shirt, a woolen shirt, a jacket, a scarf, a beanie, earmuffs, gloves, and then strap on my pair of winter boots. What usually takes 15 minutes — getting dressed to go out — takes 30-45 minutes during winter. So of course being the bum that I am I’d much rather stay in, and the conveniences in Shanghai allow me to do so!

Food

Almost every eating establishment provides the service of waimai, which is to deliver your ordered food to where you are. In Singapore I’m only aware of food delivery restaurants like KFC, Macs, Pizza Hut, Sakae Sushi. In Shanghai, food delivery for any eating establishment is a given! To me, that’s a god-send! I realize I’ve become very attached to this convenience. When I lived in the wintry months in Vancouver, I had to get my ass out of the house if I wanted to eat decently, and I even had to tip them! I don’t know if I can ever get used to living without the convenience of waimai anymore.

Tickets

Other than the relatively lower costs of concert tickets, I can order tickets online and have them delivered to me at no charge!

There are several avenues of getting concert tickets:

1) Buy from the authorized dealer either at the ticketing office or online,

2) Buy from sellers on Taobao who are selling them at a cheaper price,

3) Haggle with scalpers lingering around the concert venue just before the concert.

To give you an example of how you can cut costs by buying concert tickets on Taobao, I just attended Zhang Hui Mei’s concert in the middle of last month. The listed prices for her concert tickets started from 280RMB (Jacky Cheung’s started from 180RMB). We bought tickets at 300RMB for 580RMB seats!

Airplane tickets can also be ordered through the phone or Internet and delivered to you at no charge.

Best thing is, you only need to pay after you receive the tickets!

The Heart

What else can I say, the heart is getting very comfortable in this adopted city.

Even though I’d still have to wait till I return to Singapore to have the hei mee I’ve been strangely fantasizing about, living with someone who can whip up a bowl of Laksa at will definitely helps a great deal. *big wide grin*

Singaporeans tend to make this simple equation. Singaporean identity = Singaporean food. We spend our lives talking about food, and how good it is. We dedicate our lives finding the best food in town. For those who live abroad, they bring boxfuls of food/pastes/spices from home, and learn to cook versions of the famous Singapore cuisine. For those not culinarily inclined, they will pay exorbitant (think S$20 for a bowl of laksa) prices at restaurants to satisfy their stomachs with it. For those… you get the idea. We love our food and we can’t get enough of it.

Or can we?

Let’s backtrack to the first few months I was away from home. Even the smell of chicken rice lingering in the air made my throat tighten.

Now, I can look at a Singaporean restaurant’s menu and nothing, NOTHING speaks to me.

This can mean one or all of a few things. Has Singapore food lost its meaning on me? Do I no longer feel my identity attached to craving for laksa, chilli crab, hainanese chicken rice, bak chor mee, char kway teow, fried carrot cake (black), roti prata, chicken curry, fried hokkein mee etc? Or is it that Singaporean food holds no meaning to me when it’s not eaten in a hot and smoky hawker centre with designated seats for smoking, and the drinks stall staff impressing you with their fantastic memory of customers’ drinks?

It may the case of how the eating experience is just different so the food becomes just that, food.

Perhaps I attach too many external factors to the eating experience when it should just be about the food. But how can I enjoy it per se? Take my favourite black pepper crab for instance. Yes I do love eating it so, and I can probably eat a whole kilo of Sri Lankan black pepper crab on my own, but my crab eating experience is simply not complete without my mother there to eat it with me (and foot the bill). I’m supposed to abstain from eating seafood, crab being one of the prime abstinence because of high cholesterol content which will kill me (really, because I have familial hypercholesterolaemia), and my mother will never let me hear the end of it. But during the twice yearly homecoming, she buys me that crab meal as a kind of ritual to welcome me back, not without nagging about my diet, but nevertheless we enjoy our crab-eating feast together (and she pays).

Have I lost touch with my foodaholic nature? Hardly. If anything, I’m more a foodaholic now than ever before. I learnt the magic of laksa, bak chor mee and crabs only after I left Singapore, actually. And I’ve been catching up ever since. My tastbuds have also grown more diversified — Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, and of course they’ve acquired a liking for kimchi and all the Korean dishes made with it. More exposure to other cuisines is something I hope to achieve in time to come. Reaching higher thresholds of spiciness of different kinds is also something I want training in.

As for Singaporean food, it’s best eaten in Singapore, with friends and family.

Experiencing an amount of inertia when it comes to blogging. The notes in my phone are piling up from the random things I want to blog about, and I don’t know how else I should put them down other than yet another post about random things. (Not the 25 random things about me ok don’t worry)

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On Thursday I went for my debut Shanghai/overseas job interview. On a rainy winter day. Once I entered the interview room (it was a large meeting room), I wasn’t sure where to place the jacket I just took off.  Should I just dump it in the chair next to the one I’m supposed to sit on? In the end I wrapped it on the chair, and then realized I didn’t know what to do with my scarf. With the lack of winter garment placement practice, I hid my scarf in my bag. On departure, I wasn’t sure whether it was alright to make the interviewer wait while I put my jacket back on, so I just carried the whole damn thing all the way to the entrance.

I believe it was also my first interview with a Caucasian, a co-founder of the company. Standing at 1.9m or taller, I did not feel intimidated because I kinda grew up with a brother almost as tall as him. In fact, I liked the interview with him because 1) he laughed at almost all my attempts at jokes 2) his questions were asked in a friendly way 3) when he sits down he doesn’t tower over me.

For instance, instead of asking, what are your strengths? as many of the interviewers in Singapore would read from a script that has been photocopied since 1999, he asked, “If your best friends were right here, how do you think they’d describe you?”

I’m not sure if I want to do what I do a little in my leisure time as work.

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My mother and I have different travelling habits. I want to save as many pennies as possible while she would pay pounds to save the trouble. To her, it is always better to pay more now for the ease (e.g. taking taxis instead of trains/buses) than to pay more later for hospital bills in the event that due to lugging luggages you break your fingers.

But she would walk to three different supermarkets in different shopping malls to compare the prices of a particular product and then walk back to the first mall because it was 10 cents cheaper.

And she’d rather use a plastic bag to shelter herself from the rain than buy an umbrella or poncho.

I don’t get my mother.

But I admit we’re getting more alike than I’m comfortable with.

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Malaysia toilets always have that hose for washing down under. Japanese toilets have one or two bidets (toilets that have warmed seats and washing tubes with squirting functions, complete with power choices, buttoned) and always with disposable toilet seat covers. Seoul toilets also have limited bidets. In Bangkok the hooks for bags are placed really high, I don’t know why. Singapore toilets have a sitting : squatting cubicles on a ratio of 8:2. Chinese city toilets, if not the drain system, then sitting : squatting is 2:8, sometimes 0:10.

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Singapore MRT stations have escalators or lifts at every station, at any necessary point of elevation or depression. This convenience you cannot find in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Bangkok. I have lugged around 10kg of goods in certain Hong Kong MTR Stations with the frustration of staircases where escalators or lifts would have helped. Ditto Seoul when I carried my luggages.

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S$30 on my Singapore EZ-link card can barely last me two weeks.

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Riding with the new SBS Transit buses in Singapore made me carsick a lot. All the adjusting of suspension did not work well with my stomach.

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Ironic how people ask me if I’m Korean, and ask MissY if she’s from Singapore. Many times.

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When I told MissY about how our Skype conversations are being scanned by the Chinese, she got angry and said let’s do a Skype call, where she’d say: Chinese governent SUCKS! I meant SOCKS! S-O-C-K-S SOCKS!

She wanted to test their scanning system I guess.

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I can’t read much on the Shanghai subway, even though I’m seated. The salient feature of all Chinese dialects is that it’s loud, and I don’t know why Chinese people like to talk on their cell phones as if they were in the club with blasting music. People sitting next to me somehow like to nudge me with their elbows as well.

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I don’t like the Korean strong sense of hierarchy, but appreciate being bowed to when the young Koreans bow to her (I’m almost always next to her).

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After living overseas for long periods of time, consuming different sorts of food has done wild things to my stomach. I’ve realized that the most important thing in life is not having lots of money/status/power, but the ability to move your bowels comfortably everyday.

The main concerns when living abroad are not visa applications, internet connections, the packing/unpacking or moving of houses, but they are: what to eat for the daily 3 meals. If in China, what is the least harmful food, or what food will only be damaging many years later?

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MissY just tried to teach me the meaning of  the Korean word “assa”. “Like yay! Like when you move on to the next level in Mario you go ASSA! Like I found coconuts for Tracy (in The Sims 2) I go ASSA!”

These days, I see her occasionally blowing into her Nintendo DS Lite. She’s building a fire for her The Sims character to cook fish or something. -_-

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Disclaimer: The title is not meant to have any sexist connotation

My favourite pastime to get by classes is doodle, drawing whatever my hand decides to. I doodle on the desks, on my books, or her books. While the professor drones on about nothing worth my attention, I would be drawing flowers, stars, shapes. Or weird-looking creatures.

But today! Today I found myself doodling…CLOTHES HANGERS.

*Cue warning siren*

While others may be shopping at huaihai lu, marvelling at latest fashions, she and I are either at the local supermarket (as opposed to the soulless Walmart) or the local wet market, comparing prices of pork, chicken, or vegetables and making mental notes. We’re now experienced with which kind of pork tastes better (black-haired pigs), and the butcher knows what cut we want: 五花肉, thinly sliced, please. No skin, no fat, 1 jin, thanks. If only GRE tested her on the prices of groceries. She can tell you all about how frozen prawns are 30RMB/jin, 25RMB for fresh ones, 18-35RMB for crabs depending on whether they’re female (with/without roe)/male/alive/dead/big/small. She knows that frozen prata costs 1.60RMB less in hualian supermarket than lianhua GMS supermarket (she also says hualian and lianhua’s frozen prata cost the same but the frozen products at lianhua aren’t good. There was once she bought frozen prawns from lianhua that smelt bad so she got a refund from lianhua and went to buy the same thing at hualian with the money from lianhua. Can you picture my face when she did this tongue twister on me?). Anyways. We are this close to pulling a grocery trolley around.

Recently my daily schedule goes something like this: Drag myself out of bed, place my cell phone next to her face so she can wake up to Rihanna’s Breakin’ Dishes, cycle to school, sleep in the cold classes, leave school, go to the neighbourhood wet market to buy groceries, cook, eat together, wash the dishes while she hangs laundry, help in doing laundry, switch on the electric blanket and clamber into bed exhausted. You know, we used to get unknown bruises on arms and legs caused by bedposts or clumsy limbs. Now there’s just blisters and scratches from wintermelon thorns, crab pincers and prawn shells. And my dear wrinkly granny hands smell like a pinch of garlic, a dash of onion, and a tablespoon of rubber gloves.

To hold on to any threads of dreamy romance left, I suggested playing some love songs while we wash the veggies/scrub the pots/hang the socks. But little did I expect this. I started moving some of my cooking essentials to her place and she broke into song: “Doncha wish your girlfriend had a toaster like her, doncha wish your girlfriend had a steamer like her, doncha…”

Me: ……………………………………………

Thanks Joanne and Winni! Really cheered me up on a rainy gloomy PMSy hurtful day!

It would have been better if they were instant chicken rice, instant teriyaki chicken wings, instant bak kut teh and instant laksa though! hee hee.

Nevertheless, this package cheered me up so much I’m blogging right after opening the package! And I’m so going to cook chicken rice tonight (just the rice)!

Thank you thank you!

Do you expect me to still trust you?

Me says: “The recent discovery of melamine in mainland chicken eggs sold in Hong Kong has triggered worries that the chemical was present in a wide range of foods such as farm-raised meats and fish, a UN official said.”

Me says: “If the feed is found to be contaminated, then there is the possibility (that pork, chicken, fish and beef could also be contaminated).”

MissY says: think i gotta gna have a small garden in my balcony
MissY says: grow veggies
MissY says: and buy those chics
MissY says: and feed them only healthy food
MissY says: so that their eggs will be organic
MissY says: thatz the only way to
MissY says: live in this country
MissY says: grow ur own food
MissY says: but then
MissY says: hmm
MissY says: dunno the chic i buy is safe
MissY says: hmm
MissY says: i tell my grandma to send seeds frm korea?
MissY says: hmm but then the soil here safe or not?
MissY says: since they throw garbage everywhere

Me says: we eat oats or sth?

MissY says: but oatmeal made in china safe or not?
MissY says: haii i will live on with the cereal i brought frm us..
MissY says: then shld i go back to US this winter to bring 40kg of food?
MissY says: how much melamine did i consume today?
MissY says: will it ever leave our bodies?
MissY says: ;(i want to live till 120
MissY says: and i think china is shortening my life rapidly
MissY says: and NOW I KNOW WHY THEY GIVE SCHOLARSHIPS
MissY says: COMPENSATION for EATING POISON
MissY says: haii
MissY says: which will maintain in my body for who knows how long…
MissY says: i’m gna go to bed in saddness
MissY says: good night
MissY says: hmm is china water safe?
MissY says: shld we start drinking evian?
MissY says: (dun wry u’ll see ur sayang eating happily in the canteen tmr)
MissY says: lol
MissY says: ok i’m going to bed w/ disappointment w/ all china made food products
MissY says: but with happiness thinking of my nice pretzel

Woke up in the middle of the night with a bad case of diarrhoea and a bit of vomitting. Got up in the morning to reenact that.

Was it the ice-cream that contains milk that may contain melamine? Was it the beef that is said to be a mixture of sausage and factory flour, or worse, meat from a mysterious animal? Or was it the kangshifu water that is rumoured to be tap water?

My mother told me to just eat Quaker Oats.