I almost stepped on a giant lizard and “that looks like a clown in a blender.”

Dear all,

Despite any excitement the title of this entry may ensue, it’s been a pretty normal week:).  A few highlights though–

I was on my way to class on Monday night.  School has been crazy busy lately, not like the first two months when it was just general reading to keep up with.  We’ve had to deal with the three p’s:  projects, papers, and presentations.  We even had Saturday classes–ahhhh!!!!  This was my version of March Madness.  Now it’s April and I’m slightly more sane.  Well, until finals at the end of the month:)  

Anyway, I was on my way to class on Monday night.  NUS’s campus is nothing like Furman’s.  It has some pretty landscaped spots, but it’s mostly buildings with no huge lake in the middle.  You can see the sea and port if you’re standing on the right hill. Since the campus is mostly buildings you can imagine my surprise when a giant LIZARD (probably a little over a foot in length) crawled out in front of me while I was walking down the sidewalk.  If you’ve been following my blog, you have discovered that our trip to Kuala Lumpur provided me with ample reptile/amphibian handling skills but, alas, those skills failed me.  I was just walking along minding my own business probably listening to country music on my iPod (I dearly miss my country music–Steve, I know this appalls you:), and this lizard darts across my path.  I jumped and let out a little squeak, but trying not to be the weird white girl who was scared by a lizard, I tried to keep on moving.  I’m sure my Singaporean school mates found this hilarious.  I nearly kicked the thing because I didn’t see it in time.  When I went back for class later this week, I carefully scoured the landscape for large moving lizards–no worries.  He didn’t come back.  Tim McGraw must have scared him away:)

Later this week, once I was safe from lizards seeking higher education, John and I went to a little Chinese restaurant we like to frequent to order our usual “sweet and sour chicken rice.”  In fact, we frequent this place so much, that as we’re walking towards the place, all the sweet waitress has to do is hold up two fingers to confirm the number of orders we want to place.  Sometimes, we order three–people attribute this to the fact that we’re American.  I attribute this to the fact that John has a high metabolism.  As we approached the restaurant on this particular night, the woman looked at us with an apologetic face.  We started to confirm our order and she just shook her head as she said timidly, “no rice.”  “No rice!!!” I replied absolutely shocked that a Chinese restaurant–especially in Asia could EVER EVER run out of rice!!!  That’s like a Chinese restaurant running out of MSG!!!!  I didn’t understand, apparently, because I proceeded to try to order two other rice dishes and it just didn’t work. The rice was gone.  John was adventurous and tried something new (Hong Kong Noodles).  I had my sweet and sour chicken–without the rice.

It’s starting to seem like most of our interesting stories from the East involve food:)  Tonight, we were having dinner with our dear friend Rev at a food court in Vivo City–my favorite mall in Singapore (well, favorite western mall).  Dinner was delicious–I had Italian…yummy:).  When it came time to order dessert, John talked us into trying a “traditional Singaporean dessert” that his co-workers insisted he try one day.  Before I go any further, it’s important to understand that finding a food that is traditionally Singaporean is about as difficult as finding a food that is traditionally American.  It’s an immigrant nation and most foods can be traced back to immigrant countries.  But, his co-workers insisted that this dessert is distinctly Singaporean, so I guess we’ll call it the Apple Pie of Singapore:)  It’s called Iced Kachang.  For your viewing pleasure, I did a Google Image search on the dish.  Please view it below.

Yummy!!! Corn and Beans and a Snow Cone?

Yes, that is creamed corn on the top. And underneath this mountain of icey goodness is more corn, jellybeans, red beans, and jello.  While I can’t say the ice on top is bad (it tastes like different flavors of snow cones), I can say the concoction at the bottom is definitely not my favorite.  When dessert time comes, pass me the chocolate cake:)  John does like this though (sans corn and beans, I think) and the ice is definitely refreshing on a typical hot Singapore day.  When the dessert is half-eaten, the ice is melting, and you can see the jello and corn in the bottom, it looks a bit like a circus clown that jumped into a blender.  We had a good laugh about that one at dinner tonight.  What do you think?