Cooking in Singapore

Greetings to all of our blog followers!

Last night, I successfully baked cookies in our new apartment.  The road to success, however, was not easy.

As you saw from our apartment pictures, our apartment is quite cozy.  And, being a studio apartment, did not come with the complete appliances of a typical American kitchen.  In fact, we only had a refrigerator, microwave, and a hot water heater (yes, you have to turn on the hot water everytime you want to use it)!  I love to bake and cook meals, so, John, with the Candeto twinkle in his eye, decided we were going to “build” our own kitchen.  This, of course, made me very very happy because I want to perfect my cooking skills and even pick up some Asian flare!

Off we go to Carrefour, France’s version of Wal-Mart (they’re all over Asia, apparently) to find a countertop oven and electric burners.  After much price comparison and economic valuation we decided on two products to complete our first kitchen–and, we even remembered to pick up the appropriate powerstrips and surge protectors so as not to start a fire in our apartment.

Finally, our kitchen was set up and I was planning an old fashioned American meal for John.  I was going to make Campbells Tomato Soup and grilled cheese.  Not really gourmet, but hey, we miss that.  I had also decided to bake some bread to dip in olive oil and red wine vinegar–just like at Liberty.  I baked the bread in my new oven and it came out great.  The only problem was, the directions on the package listed the temperature in Fahrenheit and my oven is in Celsius–awesome.  I’m becoming a conversion whiz in the process of baking bread.  The bread came out fine, thankfully.

Now, time to put on the soup and start making the grilled cheese.  I put the soup on the burner and turned it on.  A second later, the entire apartment went black.  I had blown a fuse.  By this point, John was home.  We both thought:  no problem…we’ll find the circuit breaker box and flip the breaker.  Because we don’t have a flashlight–note to self, pick one up at the French Wal-Mart–John had to turn on his battery powered laptop and use the screen for light in our dark hallway.  He looked everywhere–no box.  At this point, walking by laptop light seemed a bit ridiculous, so he went to the condo market to buy a lighter (we had candles, but no fire).  And, I called the landlord.

Our landlord is a very sweet man from Burma.  But, let’s just say that usually, most of what either of us say to one another gets lost in translation.  It was about 8:00pm when I called him to tell him that I had blown a fuse.  I told him that our apartment was completely dark and we had no electricity.  His initial reaction was to tell me to just turn the lights on and he proceeded to instruct me as to where to find the light switches in our apartment.  I then tried to explain that the power wasn’t working–our TV wouldn’t turn on, our air conditioning was off, and the light switches didn’t work.  At this point, he told me that I must have blown a fuse.  At least we were on the same page.  Upon asking him where the fuse box is located, he told me exactly where.  I thought the problem was solved until he told me the room where it was was locked.  Our unit is a part of a larger penthouse and that particular apartment is vacant.  That didn’t really help our situation.  He told me he would think of what to do and then call back.

About five minutes later, our landlord called me back.  He agreed to come by our property and open the door so we could access the fuse box.  Our landlord has been fabulous–but our interactions have been extremely entertaining.  When John returned with the fire, we lit some candles and decided to go on and eat our bread by candle light.  Very romantic.  We even put a movie into one of our laptops and watched it by candle light.  It was quite the sight.

Suddenly, we heard foodsteps in the hallway and assumed our landlord had arrived.  We went outside to discover that he had sent a colleague to unlock the door.  This particular colleague, however, did not speak English–only Mandarin Chinese.  We attempted to explain to him, first in English, what the problem was.  Then, in Mandarin, John told him that we don’t speak Chinese and asked if he spoke English.  He saw this as a sign that John DID speak Mandarin and proceeded to explain the entire problem to him in that language.  Having been a Spanish scholar during my high school and college years I helplessly listened and laughed when everyone else was laughing.

Finally, he got the door to the apartment open and flipped the fuse.  Our air came back on and so did our lights.  I then, attempted to use my stove again–before the man with the keys left–and blew the fuse one last time.  Upon fixing it again, the Chinese man came into our apartment and knew enough English to point at my burners and say “no.”  I got the picture.  My burners cannot be used in our apartment.

John and I proceeded to go out for Mexican food at this point.  It was 10:00pm, he had been at work all day, and we were both tired and frustrated.   We were waiting for the bus to take us to Holland Village–where much western food is located–when who pops off the bus we’re about to get on?  Our landlord.  We explain what happened and that the problem was solved.  He said he would go “check it out,” but we decided to head on to dinner.  We were hungry and tired.

I will say that I successfully baked cookies last night, so the cooking skills are progressing.  I’ve been guessing measurements (butter here is sold in chunks, not in sticks) and converting to the best of my ability.  My record is 1-1…I guess that’s not so bad;)

Our adventures continue….