Hazy Daze

First off, apologies for the delay between blogs, I'm sure the three of you who read this were very disappointed. Mike got sick about three weeks ago, so I was taking care of him, and then literally the day he started to improve was the day I came down with it. We've pretty much spent the last month taking turns getting each other juice, Gatorade (or the Singapore equivalent called 100 Plus), and visiting what we like to refer as the "wall o' Ramen" in the grocery store.

Here's Mike perusing said wall. I only got about half of it in the shot, and this is at our local store, not one of the big ones. So far we've tried mushroom and chicken varieties, which aren't half bad. They actually have way less salt than the Ramen noodles back home, but as a result they aren't as strongly flavored. Still, there's nothing better for a cold than a big bowl of chicken flavored noodles with chili sauce. It'll cure what ails ya.

So we're finally both feeling better and we're slowly emerging from our cocoon of blankets and wadded up tissues. Of course, as soon as we can breathe again, Indonesia has to go and set Sumatra on fire and fill the entire city with smoke. At first we had no idea what was going on, I looked outside and thought maybe it was just really overcast, but when I went outside everything smelled like burning rubber and the smoke started stinging my eyes. Apparently this happens pretty much every year because Indonesia has a real problem with forest fires because farmers use fire to clear land, and on Thursday the Pollutant Standards Index reached "unhealthy" levels in Singapore. We tried to stay inside as much as possible to avoid the haze, but it was quite inconvenient. The Singapore government seemed politely annoyed about it too, the Environment Minister was quoted in the paper as saying "this is not the first time that we have informed the Indonesians that they should pay attention to hotspots in Sumatra and Borneo," and that if the haze worsens, "we will register our concerns again, perhaps on even stronger terms to our Indonesian colleagues." Uh oh, watch out, the hall monitor is pissed! Seriously, that has to be the most non-threatening warning I've ever heard in my life. 

Lovely view, isn't it? But it rained twice over the weekend, which helped to dispel a lot of the haze, so we were able to go outside without coughing. A couple of our friends invited us to a movie and then dinner over in Little India on Saturday. When we first got to Singapore we were staying quite close to Little India and we wandered over there a few times, but since we moved to the east side of town we haven't been back. It's such a colorful, different area of town, and right now everyone is gearing up for Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights. This year Diwali (or Deepavali) is November 5th, but they already have a bunch of lights strung up and down the streets. It reminded me of Congress during Christmas, and I realized how strange it is that it's not getting colder here! My body keeps expecting a change of seasons, and I constantly think it's still July.

It was Saturday night, so the streets were bustling, lots of people around buying food from the open markets. We saw tables of fireworks for sale, and it looked like every shop was selling marigold garlands, so it smelled amazing. We walked around for bit until we got hungry, and then we ducked into a small restaurant called Zaika. I think almost every restaurant in Little India could be described as "hole in the wall" by American standards, here were only maybe 6 tables in the whole place. I actually like that the restaurants are so small, it means you have a bunch of places to try, all next to each other. Plus, I've always found the smaller the restaurant, the better the food, and this place was no exception. We got a couple of our usual favorites like aloo gobi and saag paneer, and then our friends recommended we try the butter chicken. Oh man, it was one of the most delicious dishes ever, I wanted to drink the sauce. I didn't, but only because we were eating in front of other people. I'm not sure if it's a popular dish back home, but I don't think I've ever seen it on the menu at the Indian restaurants we used to go to. It may sound a little simple, but "butter chicken" doesn't really describe it properly; the sauce has a ton of ingredients, just one of which is butter. Anyway, the whole meal was great, even though Mike found a tiny bug in the tray of candy coated fennel seeds at the end. I don't care, I still ate them, I have a slight obsession with those. I once ate an entire bag of pastel colored candied fennel seeds that Mike's mom gave us. Pretty sure that was supposed to last a couple months, not two days.

Alright, friends, I promise to be more diligent in the future with regards to my blog. Happy Halloween!