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

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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...

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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.