Three Day Weekend

We've had a very full weekend, and it actually started on Thursday when we went to the Raffles City Mall, which is one of about a thousand malls they have in Singapore. We needed to get a cooler for the weekend, but we also wanted to take a look at some stores that one of Mike's coworkers had told us about. On the fifth floor of the mall there are four stores in a row that all sell the most awesome action figures and figurines I've ever seen. It was amazing, and I'm going to have to geek out for a bit, so please skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to hear me wax lyrical about Star Wars memorabilia. Not only did they have life sized statues of Yoda and Darth Maul, but they had huge and detailed Alien figures, Predator heads, and a bust of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn that I am very tempted to get for a friend who needs some cheering up. They had really detailed figures from Harry Potter that were clearly hand crafted by very talented and very lonely men. They had action figures of classic X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Hellboy--just pretty much any nerdy cartoon or movie was represented. I think my favorites were the bookends of Han Solo and Greedo with their guns drawn, and the Lost Boys action figure of Keifer Sutherland. That one came with two heads that you could switch out; regular Keifer, and vampire Kiefer. If I am ever in a position were I have around six hundred dollars to blow on a bust of a T-600 (that's a Terminator, mom) I know exactly where I'm going.

Even though Memorial Day isn't celebrated here (a tragedy), we still got to have a three day weekend. Friday was Vesak Day, which is a Buddhist holiday that commemorates the birth and enlightenment of Buddha. Since most Singaporeans are Buddhist, our whole neighborhood smelled like incense all day, and we saw a lot of shrines set up in people's yards. A few of Mike's friends from work invited us to go to the beach with them, so we packed up the cooler with some beer and snacks and headed out to Sentosa again.

I have to say, Australians are really fun people. All of the ones that I've met have been cheerful and outgoing, and we had a great time at the beach with them. It's nice to be able to talk to people who have gone through everything we're going through; most of these guys moved here sometime in the past six months and were full of useful information and funny stories. One of the things that we've been kind of annoyed with is how we tend to get overcharged for things like taxi rides and beer because we're not Singaporean, which everyone else could sympathize with. Somehow just trading stories about feeling out of place makes everything funny instead of frustrating; laughter always takes the edge off. Anyway, I'm very excited that we have friends now, and the boys have been really nice about including us when they go out. I'm thankful for that, and hopefully we can return the favor with the next batch of newbies.

We spent most of Saturday just hanging out at home. Mike checked out some movies from work, and we dedicated the afternoon to watching The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. We've been in a classic American cinema kind of mood, and nothing says America like a film shot in Spain by an Italian. We went to the grocery store for a meal to accompany the movie, and snagged some chili and the ingredients to make tortillas. I tried my best, but they still didn't come out as good as I'd hoped. Someone has promised to email me their mother's recipe (I'm waiting, buddy), so next time they'll hopefully be mas delicioso. We're seriously jonesing for Tex-Mex over here; what I wouldn't give for some carnitas from Curra's. Mmmmm. But on the bright side, we got some chips and salsa, which should hold us over for the time being.

Yesterday we braved the Singapore Food Expo, which was pretty insane. It's basically an opportunity for merchants to showcase and sample their products, which I guess is helpful since there are thousands of places to eat in this city and it's hard to narrow down where to eat. Singaporeans take food very seriously, so the turn out was no surprise; there were so many people there, it was hard to move. There were so many stands, we really only got to see probably a third of what was there. And they had stands that seemed only tangentially related to food, like one stand that sold oils for your body and a few places selling medicinal roots and herbs. The whole Expo center smelled like a combination of smoked meat and seafood, and there was steam rising everywhere. We got a bunch of food to try, including a pork sandwich, a sort of seafood sausage, chicken satay, and pan fried pork buns with mango custard. The seafood sausage was very different; it was kind of like someone mashed up a bunch of fish and shrimp, and then cooked it in a banana leaf. The consistency was kind of mushy and soft, like a paste instead of something solid. It's hard to describe the taste beyond "fishy"; I think it's one of those tastes we're just not used to. The pan fried pork rolls were absolutely delicious, though, and I could have eaten at least a dozen of them. They were sweet and salty, with a crispy bottom and little green onions and sesame seeds on top.