The food of Singapore-a couple of noodle soups

When I first moved to Singapore I thought it was so strange that people ate noodles in the morning.  I started working full time 4 months after arriving here, and I would walk through the cafeteria at work, look at the noodle dishes and just figure out something else to eat, or nothing at all.  Now a couple of years into it I love noodles in the morning (or anytime)!  Like everything else here, the food is a perfect combination of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Indonesian dishes.  The day I no longer call Singapore home the food may be the thing I miss most of all.

I will describe 2 soups that are common here and that I just love: Laksa and Mee Siam.
I doubt any Singaporean would call them soups - they would say they are noodles with gravy. Trust me, they are soups.

First Mee Siam, which I think has become my favorite.  It is a Malay noodle dish served dry or in soup, or as they say in Singapore, "gravy" (soooo not gravy.  It is most definitely, for the American palate, soup).  This dish is a combination of sweet, sour and spicy.  The thin thin rice noodles are served in a tamarind broth with sprouts, hard boiled egg, fermented soy beans,  cubes of tofu, sprouts and, in the fancier versions, a couple of pieces of boiled shrimp.  The tamarind is key to the color and taste, and of course the flavors include sambal, chili, garlic  and onion and it's always accompanied by chives and half a teeny tiny lime.  The taste combo is strange at first but trust me it grows on you.  It is served any time of day but often by late afternoon when you try to order, the person behind the counter will say "finished already".  I have it for breakfast whenever I can.  Tomorrow is the day they have mee siam at my work for breakfast.  I'm beyond excited.  Here are some pix of the dish.  It's one of the flavors that I'm pretty sure I will not have once I leave southeast Asia.  so so sad.

Sunday morning breakfast out - me, my mee siam, iced tea and a kindle.  

mee siam closeup

this is a fancy one - see the shrimps?  

Now no discussion of noodle dishes in Singapore would be complete without Laksa.  This is one of the national dishes of Singapore.  It is a coconut milk-based spicy soup with rice noodles and shrimp. At first it looks like it will taste like the Thai soup tom kha kai.  Not at all - it is totally different.  It almost always has slices of fish cake and hunks of tofu, as well as half a hard boiled egg.  As with the above soup, the better versions have boiled shrimp but I have had many many respectable bowls of laksa where the shrimp is not present like the ones in the pix below.  It's seriously an amazing spicy, curry, coconutty flavor that I also doubt I will enjoy once I am not a resident of this lovely country.  

laksa

laksa

So glad tomorrow is Mee Siam day at work!!

week one of the new school - 75% commute success rate

Week one of the new campus came and went.  The commute is.... as I told my mom, "not wonderful, not terrible."  It's far.  My kids go on the public bus for around 8 minutes, then a subway (well, a train as it goes above ground most of the way) for 35 minutes, then the school provides a shuttle that is only 5 minutes but the kicker is that there can be quite a line for that shuttle.  annoying.

this is a map of the Singapore train system - the kids get the train at Outram  (middle green line) and get off at Pasir Ris.  The closest station to my work is Joo Koon.  And it's not even that close. There was one day where I left work and took a cab to Joo Koon station then coordinated and met the kids and Outran Park.  So as a family we did the entire east west line.  

Days one and two I took the kids and picked them up using the planes, trains, automobiles system.  Took about 6 hours out of my day each day by the time I took them to their classes and waited for the teachers but I needed to see how the system worked.  Day 3 I was back to work and the kids did the commute with the maid.  She doesn't take them all the way to school.  She leaves them/gets them at the shuttle stop at the train station.  If my oldest son didn't have a phone to stay in touch I could not handle this situation.

So all went pretty ok until day 4 when... middle child has a bellyache in the morning.  (note:  he is the kind of kid who often has bellyaches in the morning).  By now I am already at work.  My husband is home with the kids and the maid.   We have to make a decision.  The decision was... middle child stays home from school.  My husband stayed with him while the maid took the kids and came back.  Not an ideal situation at all.  And to get home I couldn't have the possibly sick child accompany to go get them, so the other 2 took a taxi home - 30 minutes, $26.  Hence the 25% success rate week one.

It's a stressful situation.  We may very well end up putting them on the (insanely expensive) bus.  After one month we will have a family meeting and make the decision.

Difference between school bus and crazy commute?  My kids leave at around 7:25.  Bus picks up at at 7:45.  Not a huge diff.  But in the pm the bus gets here at around 4:15/4:20.  My kids?  around 5.  that's a big diff.

Good news is the school looks great and the kids are happy.  That's the important thing.  Here are some pix:

the train stop Pasir Ris by the school

the kids walking on the covered walkway (Singapore thinks of everything) from the shuttle stop to the train station

sideways pic but this is the inside of the school shuttle.  very nice bus.

escalators going from the atrium up to the elementary school

Now there is one benefit to the crazy commute - this being Singapore there is really fun food at the train station.  Hard to resist after a long day of school even if it adds a few minutes to the way home!

Umi Sushi is the boys' favorite "takeaway" sushi place in Singapore.

this place made us want to go to Taiwan just to eat the street food.

this crispy chicken from the Taiwanese street snacks is soooo amazing! it's a ginormous flattened chicken breast, fried of course and they cut it with scissors.  

New school year. .. new school

It's been 8+ months since I last posted on this blog.  Most of you know that I had one of the worst things that can happen to a person happen - and living so far away was extremely difficult.  My father died in November last year.  It was sudden.  We were close.  I was (and am) devastated.  Without getting into a long discussion on the topic, I'll just say that I was so sad I didn't have it in me to even share my experiences in Singapore with the blog.

Time goes by, and I am ready to jump back in.  I hope to have good discussions with friends in Singapore, U.S. and all over the world as I share the experiences we are having in Singapore as we begin our third year here.  My perspective on life has changed.  We are still enjoying our experience in Asia and we are excited to see what the year brings.  And I am ready to jump back in to the fun conversations that the blog brings.

NEW SCHOOL YEAR... NEW SCHOOL

The start of the school year is always kind of stressful - in a good way, but it's a new routine, new teachers, making sure everything has its labels, buying all the supplies... well this year we have some extra issues mixed in to make it even more fun.  Our school is moving to the far end of the island.

My three children go to an international school here.  I'll start by saying that, in my opinion, the international school scene in Singapore is out of control.  We are public school people at heart, but although Singapore has one of the best public education systems in the world (ever heard of Singapore Math?) it is not entirely realistic for international kids to go to the local Singapore school.  First of all, they would have to take a competitive test to see if they get in. Then there is the waiting list factor - neighborhood kids get priority, followed by I think legacies of the school and then permanent residents of Singapore. That leaves international kids like mine way down on the totem pole.  Oh, and it would cost around US$500/kid/month for what is free for a Singaporean.

That all taken into consideration, we opted for the international school.  My husband works for a local University, and as part of the package that convinced us to move here they pay a stipend per child per year towards international schooling (which would not count for local schools by the way, another strike).  The stipend covers not even half of the approximately 30,000 dollar/year tuition cost per child.

We moved to Singapore 2 years ago - with a 4, 6, and 10-year-old.  The American school was not a consideration for us mostly due to its cost - in addition to the high tuition...there is a "facility fee" of $12,000 per child the first year in addition to the annual cost.  I am convinced that the majority of the kids at the American school, which is I'm sure an amazing school, do not see the bill.  The traditional expat packages for businesses, embassies, etc, generally include all schooling fees including bus.  These days more and more foreigners in Singapore have either a modified expat package like we do or, in some cases, no package at all.

So we enrolled our children in the Overseas Family School, a big international school in a great location.  We got an apartment near the school which also meant near the main shopping area of Singapore, Orchard Road, and for the last 2 years the kids have had the luxury of walking to school which took about 15 minutes each way.  What a great quality of life.  And the funny thing is we thought we would not love the school - it has somewhat mixed reviews online - but you know what?  We were pleasantly surprised.  Both the kids and my husband and I have been happy with the experience and the kids have had in general great, caring teachers.

Now here's the catch - the school is moving from the convenient location to a new, fabulous campus on the east coast of Singapore.  We knew that when we signed them up 2 years ago, and like I said, we figured we would change them after the first year to a different, probably "better" school, but here we are, happy with the school.  Next week the kids will start the school year first, fourth and seventh graders, in the brand new campus which is inconvenient for our apartment and extremely inconvenient for my work which happens to be literally on the west coast of Singapore, like looking at the water and seeing Malaysia.  True.  You can see my hand-drawn map of Singapore included in this post.

Singapore is a small country. With no traffic you can drive across the whole thing in around one hour. It is shaped sort of like an eye.  Imagine we live in the middle.  School - east coast. Mom's work - west coast.  Luckily my husband works close to the apartment. Still I do not like the idea of being so far from the kids every day.  I grew up, like almost everyone I know, attending a local school close to my house.  My entire life was generally close to the house.

Most kids will take the bus to school.  Some families have that cost covered, some do not.  The cost is about $3,000 per kid  per year, so around $10,000 for my three kids.  We are going to try to avoid the bus not only for the cost (which I find outlandish) but also because one of the kids gets carsick.  So they will be going to school on the MRT (subway) with our maid.  They will take a bus about 6 minutes to the subway, board the train and it's a straight shot about 40 minutes to the very last stop where the school is providing free shuttles back and forth about a 5 minute ride.  So my kids will have an actual commute, like little adults.  We have to start the routine to see if it is practical.  i.e. are there enough seats on the train at that time?  Does the bus come quickly enough?  Do they need to take a taxi to the MRT station?  The new routine is causing me stress so I'm looking forward to seeing how it is day to day.

Then again, moving to Singapore was also stressful, worrying about every detail, and it turned out just fine.  Living abroad and going through the ups and downs of live have helped me take things in stride.  So let's see how it goes.

My cartography skills: