Hee Hee...

This sign, for a small restaurant near where we live, deserves a caption (preferably humorous, considering the name of the restaurant), but I can't think of anything funny at the moment. Any suggestions?

Mmm Mmm Good?

Milady and I were coming back from the hospital to visit a relative when I saw this banner hanging from a local hawker center. (I took the picture from inside our car while we were at a red light.) This is some fairly typical Chinese fare. The top left and top center selections are "XO" in the respect that they add some alcohol to the soups (note the bottles next to the right of the bowls). The bottom center and bottom right selections, I think, are incorrectly labeled. Instead of, say, "Braised Big Pig's Intestine," I think the restaurant owner really meant "Braised Pig Large Intestine" (and the other would be a pig's small intestine). I shan't make any cultural value comments other than to say that, of course, all these ingredients are haram to us Muslims, so I won't be eating here anytime in the future, insha'allah.

Hungry Ghost Offering

Last night, after coming home from work, Milady and I discovered that many of our Chinese neighbors were starting the "Mid-Autumn Lantern Festival" offerings. It's quite a spectacular sight to see with all the various candles being lit, the burnt offerings, and the food placed out for the "hungry ghosts." We immediately got out the digital camera, and then walked around for a few minutes to take photographs. (Most people were wary of having their picture taken, so I tried to concentrate on taking photos without people - which was a temptation difficult to overcome. ;) ) This particular photograph is, without question, the best from last night. It was also a "mistake" in that I had meant to have the flash on. However, the photo came out with this wonderful red hue, and I present the photo almost completely untouched (the only thing I have done is to compress it to 25% of the original byte-size).

Insha'allah, I'll be adding some more photos that I took from last night (and today) soon.

So what's an "ang moh?"

Every now and then, I get questions from my sisters and their daughters about what Singapore (SG) is like. One particularly cute question, from one of my neices, was "What is the official language of Singapore?" They had looked up the "answer" on Google, and came up with "Singlish." Of course, this is only our patois, lah! The official languages are actually English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil (a language from southern India). Ang Moh ("ahng moe", with a soft a) is Hokkien (a Chinese dialect) for "Caucasian." It literally translates into "red hair," which of course I don't have. Anyway, my blog's title then means "Caucasian in Singapore," and we all know how very few of us there are here. :)

Thanks to BWG!

I recently came across the quasi-blog, BWG - Adventures of a Big White Guy living in Hong Kong, Randall van der Woning's account of his life in Hong Kong. What had impressed me the most about Randall's work is that he seems not to have lost his spirit of wonder after having lived in Hong Kong for such a long time (since 1998). The cultural distance between North America and East Asia is rather large, and after reviewing some of his photos and writings, I had realized that Singapore, for me, had become taken-for-granted. Perhaps this is because Singaporeans are really trying to be British, but I seem to have lost this sense of wonder about living in a foreign culture. Certainly I had that sense while I lived in Korea a few years ago, but for Singapore, the thrill is gone...or so it seemed a few days ago.

And so, insha'allah, I'm going to try to revive that sense of wonder in this blog by trying to show through pictures and words what my life as an American expatriate in Singapore is like and to inject some "foreignness" into a now-familiar country.

I hope you'll join me for the ride.