sunil:
as you request a blog about the exorbitant amount of food i have consumed
here, your timing couldn't have been any worse. i have finally been exposed
to my first deadly encounter with a 2 day and counting encounter with the
runs...my friggin gawd make it go away! it hasn't been so bad where i'm
breaking out in cold and hot sweats (minus those times im in public and
aching to go home and find a toilet) and i haven't gotten a fever but at the
same time i must say that playing tennis while deprived of fluids and adding
more gatorade into your body is quite the antithesis for a healing digestive
track. does shabu shabu help? i did have that last night....
of course in any under developed country, water is a must not have. and its
very natural to be ordering bottled "aqua" yet none of these bottles are
refrigerated. so in the blistering (i can't breathe type of) heat, one
forgets that you can't eat the ice cubes. we went to eat black peppered
crab in pluit and i put ice cubes in my cocunut. and there you have
it...the cause of my current state of 'poignant distress'. much of the
cuisine here is fried. as with any tropical climate habitat, the hotter it
is....the hotter the oil...and i guess when the place is less developed
raging hot oil at high temperatures kills more germs than boiling water? i
don't know the mentality, but puerto rico and the bahamas was pretty much
the same way. in fact, the airport in freeport grand bahama looks pretty
much like the one here in medan and jakarta, except indo inhabits 270
million people. friggin a! 4th in the world's population and a market so
vulnerable to pretty much anything i could really start thinking of trading
in the little fish in big pond of the us to big fish in little pond here.
did you know you can sell noodles at 15000rp a pop and eventually become a
millionaire? it really makes you wonder if college and education was really
<!--
D(["mb","the path to take.....
i'm getting sidetracked here...food...did i mentino that everything here is
utterly spicy? and if not, there's about 5 different chilli pots for you to
choose from...a little spice and a little sweet soy....splash it on the fish
and voila....awesome...oh yea...
_________________________________________________________________
Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee娉
Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
",1]
);
D(["mb","",0]
);
D(["ce"]);
//-->
the path to take.....
i'm getting sidetracked here...food...did i mention that everything here is
utterly spicy? and if not, there's about 5 different chilli pots for you to
choose from...a little spice and a little sweet soy....splash it on the fish
and voila....so what i've eaten so far....black peppered chili crabs/fried fish with sweet soy sauce/tons and tons of kang kung - it's cheap here!/ sugar cane drink/ coconut drink/ fried bananas - they dip it in some kind of batter so its like eating fried plaintains with the kfc crust....oh so tasty...then the bits and pieces of batter that fall off into the oil, they scoop up and put it in a bag for you to take home.../ peanuts - fried/ shrimp chips and these other bitter chips/ everything fried everything oh so good/oyster pancakes/hairy crabs/shrimp noodles/curly noodles/curry noddles/hainanese chicken rice/curry bee hoon/sate/nasi goreng/fried kuey teow/ren dang/laksa...the native indo food is pretty good in medan...tropical fruit here is quite different...and the mango's...the long green ones are seedless with a superior creamy texture than the larger pitted red ones we're used to...they also have this awesome aromatic perfume essence to them...they say that europeans and americans dont like this perfume flavor too much.
So much to post and so little time at the computer; quite an odd turn around considering my heavy addiction to my internet laden ways of life back home. Three cities, two countries, a cold, a fever, a huge wedding, but no signs of the runs I finally sit here to try and recap my culture shock. I’m in Jakarta right now and ironically, the first day I try to type out what I’ve done here I realize…NOTE TO DISCO: I had Korean food last night…and no, my Kimchee levels were not feeling low at all.
In a country where class disparities rival the times of surfs, I live in a house with six maids and two drivers to keep me sane and healthy all at once. I got my first massage yesterday, but at 6 dollars for 90 minutes who could refuse? In fact, there’s a lady that comes to the house and gives a 2 hour massage for 5 bucks! Even with the dollar dropping like acme anvils, tips here are only 1000 rupia which is the equivalent of about a dime. Again, who could pass it up? I know I claimed to be roughing it around the world, but I’m still living up to the “when in rome…” theory. The other option of life is actually not a possibility at all. But to be honest, the other option of life is not an option at all.
I flew out from JFK straight to Singapore. My Americanized comfort zone hadn’t dropped off a bit when I got there. The city is almost entirely built on the walls of massive malls and department stores. Every other empty slot is filled with some kind of food service. I of course would be found hiding in one of those culinary crevasses. My dad, uncle, and cousin are eating fanatics. I think by 4pm everyday I had about 4 meals already trying to some how flop around in the pool only to make room for the coveted ablone and shark fin dinners that took place every night.
Singapore is immaculate for the sole reason that it is heavily regimented. You can see it in the people here. Conservative in every approach. As heat and humidity approach unbearing levels, people here look clean, proper, collected and ready to move along. Humor is delivered not even grabbing guardrails of the crude, and not just because liquor is regulated and expensive, a night out on the town with peers consisted of one drink drawn out over 4 hours chatting about NOTHING.
I came here for my cousins wedding and let me be the first to say that it was amazing. A wedding that would have easily put jlo’s wedding to shame. Friday’s smaller gathering and exchanging of vows was at the famous Raffles hotel garden. I was part of the wedding party and IT IS DAMN HOT TO BE IN A SUIT OUTDOORS. I survived. Wedding was ridiculous. Saturday’s events were in the ritz carlton ballroom. I think they booked every room in that hotel to be honest. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves when I get a chance to upload, but think of mini palm trees alongside the aisle, a moat and underwater lights with floating candles around the runway as well.
It’s funny even though cars are so ridiculously expensive in Singapore, there’s more e-classes than any other car out there.
A big part of the reason I wanted to travel was to see the world and absorb it after the light has fragmented off the surface. To see it unfiltered by American ignorance or more so my personal ignorance. Even transferring to the slightest of culture changes in Asia ala Singapore, I still felt as though I was looking through the eyes of Tony Bourdain (the cook’s tour dude on foodtv). Finding myself at awe or trying to compare too much with what I had already knew.
I met quite a bit of international students in sing and I told them that I was quite jealous that they were able to grow up ambidextrous in cultures and habits. Even the smallest things like being able to drive on the right and left hand sides of the road without flinching and of course being multi-lingual I was envious of. Interesting response they gave was that, kids here can grow up with a set number of cultural influences with them but are never able to expand upon that due to societal circumstances and restrictions, where as I, the American, grow up with maybe 1 or 2 cultural influences but can learn as many cultures as I want to learn.
From Singapore I directly to Indonesia, Medan to visit my grandfathers resting place. Medan, even though it’s the largest city in Sumatra is OH MY GOODNESS, I cannot believe I was here when I was 9. dirt roads, dirt covered buildings, “dirty people”, dirt dirt and more dirt, I thought I was in the city of joy at one point (swayze movie). I wouldn’t have been taken aback if a bunch of lepers decided to crawl on top of the car to grovel for money. The way people drive here is crazy, not in the Taiwan way where cars still follow some sort of lane assignments and that there are even lines on the roads, its more that there are no stop signs nor stop lights that direct anything or anyone so people just plunge into crossings at will making oncoming traffic veer to the side to still get in front of you. Bus doors stay open in motion so passengers can hop on at whenever, these are mini buses, probably the size of a mini van with seats along the sides squeezing as many as 11 people on board. That’s just the way life is there. Traveling with my dad, any trip is always about eating. So of course I get off the plane and stopped at Miramar for the first meal. Authentic Indonesian food can curl your tongue with its authenticity and rich native flavors. Curry, fried chicken, fish…great stuff. I don’t even know how to describe it really and due to the number of meals I’ve had in the past 2 weeks, everything has slowly become an abdominal blur. if there’s one thing I’ve had way too much of, its kuey tiow. Fried, dried, soup, seafood, meat, you name it, I’ve had it. Damn good though. Curry bee hoon is great too.
I could honestly give another paragraph or two on tropical fruits but I’ll have to post some pictures up of eating durian in the streets. Im gonna have to force a few of you to try it when I go home, and if you don’t’ like it I’ll surprise your fridge with some on your birthdays!
That’s it for now, don’t really feel like typing anymore. I’m off to bali in a week if anyone cares to join. Australia seems to keep being pushed back. At this rate, I’m not going till December. Shit, that means I’ll miss boarding season?
Playlist:
Telepopmusik – trishiak
Radiohead – thinking about you
Flaming lips – ego tripping at the gates of hell
The killers – mr brightside
The strokes – last night
Frou frou – let go
Travis – love will come through
I wanted to post so much on the election and the 2 campaigns. I spent 10 hours of my flight reading on nothing but kerry and bush and blegh, now I just don’t have enough time to sit down and get enough coherent pages across. Absentee ballot away!
i wrote this last week in sing but never finished....
Before even writing this entry out, Ie spent probably a good week jotting down notes and hearing the narration of this self-inflection post in my head every night before I go to sleep. Every night the words seem to flow, the phrases so eloquently perfect and the clich廥 seemed to find their niche automatically. But now that the actual writing has arrived, I draw nothing but blanks. This is my first indication as to the muddled state of mind I have been in. gawd, just let me get this out in a clear form and Il feel much better about myself.
The 1st person dialogue at this juncture of my life resonates not with the evin Arnold?tone (probably because I no longer coping with the tribulations of puberty), holden caufield voice doesn seem to fit into the scene, and Ie even tried to voiceover a Regis fillmans gameshow voice to put a sarcastic mocking spin on it but in the end the one that finally works best for now is my own. The voice of my own confessional booth (do not associate this with reality tv booths), one of those long drawn out, head down pouring your guts out into the river kind of ordeals you see at the end of movies. I lay there last night with the headphones on feeling like the bed was spinning and the camera just zoomed out above me while I sank into the sheets, thinking of this narrator.
I haven been able to write about the huge plateonic shifts in my life the past 2 months because I just haven been able to get a handle on it. Il make the breathe stretch shake attempts, but nothing seemed to come together except the yearning for more. Less the fear of not experiencing life, but the craving to seek and explore (haha, I almost typed sexplorehat too?). I type this post from singapore right now as the around the world journey is slowing taking its path. This also means that I have deferred from medical school for a year.
Taking the tests and applying was the easy part. Once the ball got rolling, you just kind of sat around waiting for the next steps of the procedure. Problem was, when I was finally faced with a life-long decision, I wasn ready to take it due to my own curious nature. Maybe too confident in my personal career prowess, putting career on hold was not a big decision for me and I felt it in no way changed my future goals by doing what I was doing.
While I packed I found myself relating to Bilbo in tolkiens first book he hobbit?SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> backpack and a cane and both scurred and ready to look for nothing but adventure in the world.
i'm alive...
=)
