Jan. 1, 2014
We started New Year’s Eve
with breakfast at the hawker center. I’m fast getting tired of the place.
Joanna had something new to
me, though, a barley drink. So what’s new, you ask, knowing that I’ve had
plenty of barley drinks in my time. Well, all of mine were fermented and many
distilled.
I had a sip. It was a thin
watery drink with very little flavor. It was refreshing enough and probably had
lots in it that was good for me. But I was working on coffee. I get about two,
three hours grace in the morning and then coffee deadline falls. I get a
headache and chills if I don’t have two cups of caffeine. Coffee is best, but
tea will do.
I had it with nothing
inspired, only melon and muffin.
Try as I might, I just can’t
face chicken gizzard or pork offal for breakfast. Lunch or dinner, OK. After
all, you get to brag how you ate delicacies that get thrown out back home. But
not with my morning coffee. I am lacking in energy or adventure without my
caffeine.
We pass the Hindu temple on
the way to the hawker center, and activities have been picking up. We hear
music inside and the shoes have been filling more and more of the sidewalk
every day. Perhaps it is due to the approaching New Year.
The Buddha Tooth Relic
Temple is decked out in colorful artificial flowers.
Much of the city of
Singapore consists of sterile, utilitarian towers. But there are colorful
things to find in various corners, sometimes even in the utilitarian towers.
We rested at the Porcelain
for a while, and then went out for lunch. We went back to Gong He Guon. This is
the place on Cross Street, a modern commercial strip, not far from the laundry
shop where we had the herbal tea and the health dessert called kwai leng guo.
It’s a Hong Kong herbal medicine dressed up as dessert.
After having enjoyed the
slightly root beer flavored kwai leng tea, Harry was ready to pull out the
stops. Gong He Guon serves a 24-herb tea in a bowl. Joanna was skeptical. It’s
bitter, she warned.
But hey, I drink coffee
black and IPAs. I’m used to bitter.
It was actually pretty good.
It had a slightly bitter edge, but there were so many light herbs competing in
there that maybe one flavor canceled another. It was mild and didn’t taste
anything like root beer.
Joanna explained this is
what she is talking about when she sips one of my favorite ales and says it
tastes like herbal medicine.
We had more kwai leng guo,
which also has little flavor of its own. It has the consistency of Jell-O and
Joanna poured a watered-down honey on it.
We had an egg custard with
ginger that was very tasty. I wanted to try some dumplings called tong yin.
They came in a sweet sesame-seed soup called sima woo (I’m making up the
transliterations here, gang). The dumplings are chewy, because they are made of
rice flour and steamed. They have a surprise filling of peanut paste.
I don’t know about the
custard or sima woo, but 24 herbs and kwai leng guo—hell, enough of that and I
may be able to fly like one of those guys in the kung fu movies. I always
wondered what it would be like to run across the top of a bamboo grove.
My feet were acting up so we
took it easy in the afternoon. We came back to the Dragon Court for a nap and
then when we got up decided to go for a stroll at that delightfully friendly
Italian restaurant, the Capricci on Tanjong Pagar Road.
This is where we ate a few
nights ago, before we left for Bali.
Joanna wanted a few shots of
herself walking on the streets of Singapore, so we got a few good locations,
with Year of the Horse decorations, a temple, and other Singaporean stuff in
the background.
We walked through the
Chinatown Complex, a market of individual stalls that seems to go on forever.
There’s a grocery store downstairs, but it was pretty much closed up by the
time we got there, around 5:30 or so.
The tailors on South Bridge
Street have stopped coming out of their shops to offer to make me a duplicate
of the jacket I’m wearing. I have told each one that I’m sure he can, but I am
not in the market for new clothes right now. God, I have to carry this stuff,
and I travel with one checked bag, even for this trip, which will last a total
of 17 days.
It is only a little stronger
than dry vermouth and club soda, which is the drink I take when I have been
drinking too fast early in the evening and want to sober up before bed time.
The bartender, who may be
one of the owners, mixed a tall and strong one for us. He’s the guy who noticed
us walking past before we came into the restaurant last week.
He greeted us again, as if
we were regulars, and introduced the man who would be our waiter.
The waiter, he told us, had
been hired a couple of hours earlier. He looked like one of those wiry Malays
with a sunken face that will look the same from the time the guy is 30 to 100.
We had fettucine Bolognese,
followed by grouper cooked with tomato and little potatoes. Joanna had a
merlot, and I went through two glasses of Chianti, which may have been from a
different wine maker from the one I had last time. This one wasn’t as sharp.
Dessert was strudel
accompanied by a glass of prosecco.
It was a good New York-New
Jersey upscale Italian meal, and very good.
The rookie waiter was very
attentive, and always spoke first to Joanna, addressing her as “Madame.” He
stood at attention when he spoke to us at the table. His English enunciation
was very careful and clear.
I hope he is not as uptight
as he appears and eventually relaxes into the job. Otherwise, the tension may
make his head blow up.
New Year’s Eve is often an
early night for Harry. I may stay up till midnight, but am usually home early.
The only memorable New Year’s Eve that I spent out was in Chiang Mai, where we
lit a lantern that sailed up and joined hundreds of others glowing in the
breeze, and then watched the fireworks over the moat. Fantatstic.
I was out late last year,
but that was Barcelona, where nothing much going on besides a drunken chorus of
La Marseillaise and a lot of people wasting good cava by spraying it into the
air.
So prosecco and strudel, and
then a short cab ride, finished the night for me. Joanna too, or maybe she was
just humoring me. She looked fine and ready for more playing.
Happy New Year to all.
Jan. 2
Harry you are the person I
want to be
I have another favor to ask.
I'm on the verge of being trapped in Philly a day longer than planned - if
Jeanie needs a car Saturday can she borrow yours. She said she would fill the
tank and leave a bottle of absinthe.
Karl
Jan. 2
Of course, she can.
The keys and a wallet with
the relevant papers are in a silver bowl on the table in the living room.
No need to buy gas, or anything. And I have a bottle
absinthe, which is about 6 or 7 years old. Do you like the stuff? I can polish
off 24-herb tea, but I can't develop a taste for absinthe. How strange is that?
Harry
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