Posts That I Did Not Want to Create A Post For...

Warning: This post has a few lewd connotations. You have been warned.

I recently made fun of a friend who created an album on Facebook because he created an album of random pictures he wanted to share, but (in his words) "did not want to create an album for".

Today, I find myself in the same situation. This post contains 4 mini-posts. Things we enjoyed and want to share, but by themselves, not momentous enough to expand and elucidate about.

First up - let's start with the one thing everybody seems to be crazy about - that four-letter word that begins with the letter F - the one thing that everybody wonders where to have it at least once a day.... you got it!

♫ Let's talk about food baby, let's talk about you and me, let's talk about all the things that go into our bellies, let's talk about food.... ♫


Part One - Food
When we arrived at Macondo Hostel in San Gil, we saw a note that directed us to the hostel next door for a breakfast set of freshly cut fruits, toast, eggs and coffee at COP 5,000 (USD 2.50). Decent enough. Pretty filling too. Then we were talking to 2 fellow hostellers and they told us of this this stall at the marketplace that offers a fruit salad that was unbelievable! Curiousity aroused, we checked it out.

Fruit salad at the marketplace in San Gil

Though we ordered from a different stall from our fellow hostellers, we were also amazed by the fruit salad. For a measly COP 2,000 (USD 1), you get something like half a kilo worth of freshly cut fruits - bananas, strawberries, papayas, watermelons, honeydews, kiwis, apples, guanabana (soursop) and peaches. All stacked into a mountain like an ice kacang, then topped with grated coconut, grated cheese and drizzled with a heavenly concoction of sweetened milk. I have never been so in love with fruits before!

For the rest of our stay, breakfast was always the fruit salad, sometimes with freshly squeezed juice as well. The stall owner was really nice too! COP 1,700 (US$0.85) doesn't just get you one glass of mora (raspberry) or guanabana (soursop) or mango con leche (i.e. fruity milk shakes) - before you're even done slurping up the last drop, she tops up your glass with the remainder milk shake in the blender. Always! And FOC too! We like! :)

The wife and her tasty bit.... of empanada

A few steps from the fruit stall was another stall selling empanadas. The wife really likes her empanadas - maybe they remind her of the curry puffs back home. The ones we tried in Bogota were only so-so, with skimpy fillings of tuna or extra tough minced meat. The ones in San Gil were much more generous, with eggs and rice added to the meat (tender pieces of shredded chicken) inside. Muy deliciosa!

For anyone searching for directions to the market:
1. Go to the church at Plaza Mayor
2. With your back facing the church, walk straight down the road
3. You will pass by an Exito supermarket on your left, and a yellow-edged building on your right. The yellow-edged building is a market.
4. At your forward-right (1 o'clock direction) you will see that the yellow-edged market continues across a small road. That is the building you want.
5. Enter the building, walk past the vegetable stalls and proceed all the way across the building, and you will see the cluster of fruit stalls there.
6. The one we ordered from would be on the right side of the aisle, across from another stall with juices called Matrimonial and Divorce (yeah... a real huh? moment right there!), but we reckon all the stalls there will sell you the same stuff. Try it and enjoy!


Part Two - Music
On our last day in San Gil, we made our way down to the marketplace for fruit salads and empanadas as usual.

Surprise, surprise, there was a marching band on the street!

Don't you just wish you had a bowling ball?

Some roads were closed to public, and there was some sort of announcement of appreciation being made. Unfortunately, our Espanol was too mediocre, and we were not able to understand exactly what the appreciation was for.

Fast and nimble hands. She will find appreciative men easily, I'm sure

I could appreciate, however, how good these kids were. This girl was holding this heavy-looking xylophone thingy and standing still while the speech was being made. Then, when the command was given, she started playing without even seeming to look at the instrument, and every note rang true. When it wasn't her turn to play, she was twirling her xylophone-thingy-stick as if it were a mini-baton. In fact, you could see this simple bit of showmanship from all the band members.

Impressive!


Part Three - Haircut
For some reason, the state of my hair has become a major fixation amongst friends on Facebook and readers of this blog. Maybe it's because the wife made such an unforgettable post about my DIY haircut.

I had just wondered on Facebook whether I should cut my hair, and it somehow became a poll! Of course, because of WOW (Will of Wife, not World of Warcraft), it was actually already a foregone conclusion.

Snip Snip the Sequel

So yeah, four months and a bit after my last proper haircut in Singapore, and 2 months after my DIY attempt, I went for a haircut at the local peluquero.

Sigh.


Part Four - National Day
I had wanted to put this as Part One, actually, but I prefer the entries to be in chronological order. We celebrated National Day away from home in Bucaramanga, which is one of the nicer cities in Colombia.

Being 13 hours behind Singapore, we had to wake at 5am just to watch the webcast of the NDP. The alarm from the wife's iPhone rang, and we literally just rolled over and switched on my laptop, having already downloaded the necessary plugins and bookmarked the website earlier.

Good thing we had a private room this time round!

I have to confess that I snoozed a little more while el Presidente was inspecting the honor guard, but other than that, I thought the whole parade was really pretty interesting. Before we knew it, all 10 chapters were up, and the 8.22pm moment came and it was time to put on some clothes for our next picture.

I was looking at the laptop, not sleeptalking. Yi Lin was trying to remember the words

Because we love you, Singapore!

Hmm... Today newspaper just reported that there were viewers of the NDP webcast from USA, Australia and some other country. What about possibly the only viewers from Colombia, huh?!



P.S Yi Lin was not really trying to remember the words of the Pledge, but she can't say it in Mandarin either! So I win! :p

Celebrating Our Home, Away From Home

One of my friend's updated his Facebook status today to: "XXX: people were dancing to Stand Up For Singapore at Zouk!"

The image of Singaporeans (and friends from overseas in town for Singapore's 44th birthday party) bobbing around to the wonderfully cheesy tune in the dark bowels of Singapore's hippest and most famous disco actually invoked a twinge of homesickness in me.

We have been away from home for approximately 130 days. Until now, I've never felt homesick. Yeah, sure, pictures of food from home on my friends' Facebook albums and food blogs send Dan and me into bouts of sad laments about missing chwee kueh, mee siam, durian, etc. But I've never actually missed home (only our bed and our bathroom) and have never wished ourselves back to our normal lives in Singapore. Instead, I'm actually terrified of being sent home before our scheduled return date should our trip finances run dry.

Well, there is nothing more homesick-inducing than the thought of everybody back home celebrating National Day together - and you not bobbing with them to the tune of Stand Up For Singapore.

I don't know any other country who has a new song written for National Day each year. Cheesy as they are, National Day songs are such a huge part of the celebrations that I can't imagine not having them. I remember the numerous sing-along sessions during my primary school days where the music teacher would flash the lyrics of the newest National Day song, typed or neatly written on a piece of 'transparency', on the OHP (overhead projector) in the school hall and groom the pupils into singing it to perfection. We were given sheets with the musical score and accompanying lyrics to take home, and I would try to commit the new lyrics to memory while banging the tune out on our piano.

Sure, the two of us could belt out the home-grown hits that we grew up with in the 1980s - Stand Up For Singapore, Count On Me Singapore, We Are Singapore and One People, One Nation, One Singapore (I still know all the lyrics by heart) - but really, squeaking together in a miserable duet in the middle of Colombia simply cannot compare to singing in unison with a 30,000-strong crowd on the Singapore city waterfront. Listening to this year's cool National Day masterpiece by Electrico on YouTube does not have the same 'warms-the-cockles-of-my-heart' effect as being bombarded by the music video (featuring an equal distribution of Singaporeans of every race, age and walk of life) every 30-minutes on Channel 5.

It's nice that even though we're not in Singapore during these patriotic times, we don't feel as if we've been forgetten and that nobody cares if we've fallen off the face of the Earth. We received an invitation from the Singapore Embassy in Washington D.C. to a National Day event. And because my Singapore mobile phone number is still in operation, my phone beeped with SMSes from the NDP'09 Organising Committee to recite the pledge at 8.22pm on 9 August, and from my MP, Mr Wong Kan Seng wishing me Happy National Day. Sweet!

For the past 2 years, we've been fortunate enough to watch the National Day Parade (albeit only the preview) from the grandstand along the city waterfront. We throw ourselves wholeheartedly into the celebrations - plastering everything we can find in the goodie bag onto our faces and bodies and waving our plastic flags until they break. And I cherish the moment when the giant Singapore flag sweeps majestically across the skies against the city skyline as everyone rises to attention, singing Majulah Singapura as one - I choke on emotion every time. It's a pity that as adults, we hardly sing our national anthem nowadays.

This was us at the NDP Preview last year:

Wearing my country's stars and a botched-up flag with pride

Gifts galore at NDP - twinkling caps, flags and giant gloves

Donning red or white tees. Last year, Dan took up the dare to wear the couple tees I bought in Bangkok in front of 30,000 people. He's a cool dude alright and not any less macho for doing such a cheesy thing for his wife.

Despite our constant complaints about life in Singapore, Singaporeans really love wearing their patriotism proudly on their sleeves

This year, we celebrated by treating ourselves to dishes close to our heart - the closest that we could find in the hills of Colombia, in a town called Bucaramanga. We stumbled upon a Chinese restaurant while tripping through the neighbourhood. We were magnetically drawn to the giant xuang xi (Double Happiness) character at the entrance and walked, hypnotised, right into the restaurant, all the while praying fervantly that the prices would not be exorbitant.

Thankfully, while not as cheap as the standard Colombian set lunch (but definitely cheaper than the so-so pizza we had last night), the prices were okay. We kicked off our National Day celebrations with a huge serving of chau mein especial - stir-fried yellow noodles with oodles of green vegetables (ohhh, morsels of heavenly cabbage, brocoli and bean sprouts), chicken, ham and beef, and a giant crispy springroll.

It was SO incredibly wonderfully satisfying.

Chinese people NEED Chinese food. Period.

We returned for dinner and without needing to look at the menu again, ordered chau fan with chicken. Dan spoke to the lau ban (boss) in Cantonese and we were rewarded with a mountain of fried rice, with huge pieces of tender chicken breast and shrimp! Amazingly, it tasted just like the chau fan served up at the zhi char stall at the coffee shop near our flat in Bishan. Okay, it was missing the pieces of char siew, but we can't be picky yah!

The serving was so huge that we contemplated saving one third of it for lunch the next day.... NAH!!!! The mind was willing to dapao (pack the remainder to go), the stomach was willing to dapao but the tastebuds were not!

Both the rice and noodles came to COP 14,000 (US$7) each, for a portion large enough for 2. In our humble opinion - damned worth the money.

Speak in their language and thou shalt be rewarded

Tummies filled and cravings satisfied, we've set our alarm for 5.45am (Colombian time) on 9 August, so that we can catch the 'live' Webcast of the parade together with everybody back at home! Let's hope that we wake up on time!

HAPPY 44TH BIRTHDAY, SINGAPORE! Feliz Cumpleaños! WE LOVE YOU DEEP DEEP!

Happy National Day to all Singaporeans! Majulah Singapura!

Hugs & Kisses from Colombia,

Yi Lin & Dannie