Tianni on Play: Cross Pollination

A Singaporean in Beijing, reporting on China in English, for a Japanese news agency – for the past close to a year now, that has been how I have been describing my most recent assignment as English-language correspondent for XX news agency to those who ask.

But besides a mischievous desire to confound acquaintances, this convoluted description couldn’t be a more accurate reflection of the cultures I find myself having to cross into and back out again many times in the course of a day. Having lived and worked in several countries, different cultures do not faze me very much anymore, or so I’d thought. In my naïve assumption, I’d thought that since I speak and read the Chinese language and had survived working in Thailand with a grasp of Thai just enough not to get lost by, China will be a walk in the park.



Then I found it was indeed a walk in the park, albeit one taken by a law-abiding Singaporean, in a Japanese garden, the walls of which held off a very raucous Chinese world.

Let me explain. I have worked at length at two news bureaus and freelanced for several others. Most feature loud (sometimes screaming) news editors and equally strung-out journalists who are not beyond chattering to themselves in some nervous soliloquy when deadlines loom. But my first day at the bureau went by without hearing many more than ten words exchanged between colleagues. I attributed it to first day unfamiliarity.



But after a week of calm quiet in an office where conversations were as rare as finding good yakitori in Beijing, it soon became clear to me that a Japanese newsroom is quite unlike any others I’ve worked in. The mood inside is more akin to those hills of serene bamboo forests I once had the pleasure of walking up an autumn afternoon in Kyoto – solitary, aloof and yet filled with the promise of enlightenment at the end of the climb. Now if I could only pick up enough Japanese to converse with that sensei I’m sure is waiting cross-legged at the top, I have no doubt I too could feel part of this Zen-like state.



As if in contrast to the serenity inside, outside the bureau is the downtown heart of the Chinese capital, where a cacophony of lawless cars threaten to plow into pedestrians on green ‘walk’ signs, and bicycles and electric bikes swerve to avoid people, cars and each other while simultaneously going in all four directions. AND, I kid you not, spitting camels on the sidewalks. No, I’m lying. About the camels, I mean, not the spit. It will help give a clearer idea of my discomfit at this favorite Chinese pastime to explain that in Singapore, we have fines for dirtying our clean, green city with sputum, and signs everywhere reminding us of that should we have the sudden urge to clear out our respiratory tracts.



So you can imagine my chagrin when happily cycling to work one morning in the designated bicycle lane (which I should mention also doubles up in Beijing as a second pedestrian walkway and a lane for expensive German cars wishing to overtake the routine choked traffic), a man strolling along the sidewalk ahead loudly cleared his throat and spit into the bicycle lane. And as it goes on unfortunate mornings like this, I rode straight into this flying torpedo.

I shall cut this non-too appetizing narration short by just saying that I valiantly rode on as any journalist on a mission to get into the office would. This was post-Olympics after all and the courtesy campaigns that hounded people to queue up and not spit have all but disappeared. And I must say it’s a relief, spit in my hair or not. If I wanted organized predictability and being slapped with fines, I guess I could always pay home sweet home a visit.

4MNCGEX2QSD5

Cirrus Cloud on Love: Our Anniversary

Our anniversary was a double celebration: it marked our first year of marriage and our first year in New York.

"Being married" – a year ago, these words were foreign to me. Well, not exactly foreign but I was merely acquainted with them.





You see, I used to be a typical career woman. I loved clinching deals and sniffing out new ones. I always joked that there was no need to get married; it was better to make loads of money and check myself into a home when I grew old. There was no need for dependency. That was passé.

They say you meet "The One" when you least expect it.

I remember asking my colleague about her husband and how she knew he was "The One." They got married within six months of meeting each other. She threw me a hackneyed “when you know, you know." I secretly rolled my eyes and thought, “Whatever."

So, it was at yet another work-do that I would meet "Him," and I was highly inebriated on sangria and Dom Perignon. But even when the so-called beer goggles wore off, his looks and personality still charmed me as the evening wore on.

Before long, we started dating, and our relationship just got better as time went by. How strange. I was used to the cliché that things only go downhill henceforth.

We only saw each other on weekends as he worked in Hong Kong and I, Singapore. To bridge the gap, we would take turns traveling to one another's home base every Friday and return to our respective countries on the late flight Sunday.


One of the things we would do over the weekend in Hong Kong (Horse Racing in Sha Tin). In this picture, it appears that the horse is headless. Fear not, his head is bent over to his left.

This arrangement worked out fine as we were both busy bankers. We coped well until he received news that he was going to be posted to New York City.

I have never had much faith in long-distance relationships. Hong Kong-Singapore was manageable but sometimes still a pain. New York-Singapore? How about no way, Jose? I loved my job and my colleagues, not to mention my family and friends. It was a hard choice.

It was around that time that he proposed marriage. Now, I love risk, but this was going to be the biggest test of my love yet. Risk in business could be hedged. Risk in love -–in my opinion – ends in a binary result: you either win or you lose.

But you know what I decided in the end.

Yes, I quit my job, packed my bags and moved to New York after our civil marriage in Singapore. I had taken on a new role: an unemployed housewife.

Even after a year, I am still not used to putting down “homemaker” as my occupation on custom forms. I cringe each time I have to write that down. But I don't mean to offend all the great housewives out there. It is the hardest job one can ever do. It is such a selfless job, but one for which I feel I receive no personal gratification.


Beware the amateur chef!

I was simply not accustomed to my new life. I used to be rewarded in dollars for the amount of hard work I put in. Now, the math was incorrect!

My husband was empathetic. He knew how career-minded I was. He felt guilty about uprooting me from my job, my family, my friends and, most of all, for the loss of my sense of independence. He even suggested drawing up a "contract" with an arbitrary salary, so that I could pretend that he had employed me, if that would make me feel better.

No, he wasn't suggesting a prenuptial agreement. We both think that kills any romance in a relationship. It is akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy that your marriage will end at some point.

Eventually, I decided on a fancy new work title with my "boss": I am now the Secretary of Home Affairs. Literally.

I deal with everything at home – from leaking pipes to bank managers. I wear more hats than I thought I ever would. Oh, and my work wardrobe has also grown: On some evenings, I dress up as a corporate wife. Then I get to wear sweats to the gym and casual clothes to run errands.


My new best friends!

But I no longer wear power suits, which I miss. I have an undefined job scope, which I still cannot fathom at times. I have no colleagues to chat with, and I can go an entire day without speaking to anyone.

Instead of whining, I should tell you the perks of my new job.

I get to wake up at 10 a.m. everyday. No more 7 a.m. breakfast meetings and midnight conference calls. My time is my own. I have salsa lessons three times a week and Spanish classes twice a week. I have also learned how to cook and clean. I dictate what I do with my life, for the most part.

But these changes have also been a shock to my system. I can no longer tolerate caffeine or alcohol much, and I get tipsy after two glasses of wine. Mind you, I could chug a bottle or two in my heyday.

In a sense, I am detoxifying my body and my spirit. I now have time to say "hello" to the wine merchants downstairs. I have time to chat with fellow shoppers and I have time to write blogs!

I am now in the second year of my new job, which I cannot terminate as I wish. I did not get a pay increase but I did receive a paltry year-end bonus – just like the rest of the average Joes serving the powers-that-be in the banking industry!

I am in awe of women who are full-time mothers and homemakers. This tale is to thank my mum for her years of dedication to her family. And to all the great homemakers out there – three cheers for you all!

Rojak Timeout (by Shakeleg)

Just like the spicy rojak salad dish, the postings here are about anything and everything under the sun. They're meant to make you a keen, lean, lovin' Internet machine as you wait for the next story to be posted by our authors.

Today's Rojak Timeout is by Shakeleg in Indonesia.



***
Shakeleg says:

Jakarta's infamous traffic jams, called "macet" (pronounced mah-chayt), are part and parcel of city life.

A 15-minute drive could stretch to an hour or two because of the jams. The streets are polluted and wearing facemasks is common practice.

To beat the traffic, most people (like me!) opt to hire an ojek, or motorcycle taxi offering to shuttle people to places. These ojek riders are dangerously skilful!


The Pangkalan Ojek, or the Ojek Terminal, typically is at a street corner, usually under trees.

You can spot ojek riders from afar. Use these tips.




(oops spelling error spotted,should be "properly"! :P -- hey, to err is human! Hahaha!)

The helmets used by the ojeks have missing straps and many look like inverted bowls. Not only do they look uncool, they offer no/little protection.



Sure you're not expected to be all covered up like this (below). In any case, you might die of heatstroke if you choose to dress like this. Haha!



You also need to protect yourself from pollution. Check out the guy with the hanky covering half of his face in the photo below. Unlike him, you don't want to look like a suspected terrorist either. Ha!



These are safety tips from me. I got my PSB-tested helmet from Singapore and a cloth face mask (that can be washed and used over and over again).



And now we're ready to go for a spin!

Una Ragazza on Love: Sisters Abroad

Growing up, my jie (sister) and I quarreled a fair bit. She was the perfect kid with whom every other kid in school wanted to play zero-point or sit next to in the canteen – smart, cool, fashionable and artistic – while I was often the geek who frowned upon too much play. At home, she was very well-mannered and sensible whereas I was, at times, curt and disrespectful.



The canvas of an artistic jie



Accumulating points at zero-point

This made for a clear-cut winner for the "best-behaved kid in the family" title. As a result, I responded by keeping my distance and refusing to let her grow close to me. We were cool with each other, but never the best friends that the silver screen often portrayed loving sisters to be.

Now, for nearly 12 years, my sister and I have been living apart.

It started when I was about to enter university in Singapore and she was off to graduate school in America. My feelings about her departure were mixed. On one hand, I would no longer be constantly nagged at to buck up at one thing or another in my life; on the other, I would be reminded ever so often by family members about this poster child of a sister who is the first in the family to go to an Ivy League, and on a scholarship to boot.

I remembered giving her the awkward parting gift of a jigsaw puzzle of Times Square; I wasn't sure why I'd thought she'd have enough space in her overflowing suitcase for 250 loose pieces of cardboard with silver dust on them.



In the months following her departure, I missed her terribly. I had not realized how much her presence meant to me, even though we'd squabbled half the time about inconsequential things.

When she called home, I found myself curious about her life abroad, and our conversations were surprisingly civil and respectful. I also started to write her occasional e-mails, earnestly looking forward to each reply in which I'd hope to learn a little more about her life in a foreign land. At times, these exchanges were instructional. At others, they were merely for their entertainment value.

"My roommate today told me she got a urinary tract infection," began one such conversation. "She even casually added that it's due to too much sex with her boyfriend. So funny, these American girls. Now, don't tell mom I told you this..."

Of course, I kept up a good front and never let on that her absence bothered me much – even at a young age, I was a proud kid.

About five years would pass before I, too, would leave Singapore. I had received a scholarship and would be studying in Italy. I can still recall my excitement as I broke the news to my sister and held my breath as I awaited her reaction, hoping for that sign of approval and for her to say that she was proud of me. She didn't disappoint. She was glad that I'd be embarking on a once-in-a-lifetime journey and offered to provide any help or advice on overseas living that I might need.

Since then, I had moved around a lot – after Italy, I'd spent time in Switzerland, then Germany, North Carolina, and Belgium. Regardless of where I lived, my sister is often my primary source of refuge in time of need – be it for companionship, relationship advice, financial or immigration issues.



Give the woman a needle and thread, and voilà!

So it was quite a no-brainer when I decided to move to New York after my multi-country stint in Europe. My sister had been living in Manhattan with her husband for some years by then, and she welcomed me with open arms when I announced my decision to venture across the Atlantic. We were to spend nearly three years together in the same city before she would move away again, but those three years were good years.

While we were seldom each other's top pick for a weekend meal or an afternoon of shopping back home, suddenly in New York, nearly 10,000 miles from Joo Chiat, we seemed to have discovered the simple joys of having each other close by and spending time together.

We'd walk the shopping streets of Soho, sip coffee in Village cafes, stroll through The Gates' billowing orange drapes in Central Park, and even cook in her 5' by 8' windowless kitchen in Morningside Heights. Every now and then, we'd find ourselves giggling like schoolgirls at the strangeness of New Yorkers (more to come on this strangeness in subsequent tales).



The Gates by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Winter 2005



The (typical) New York kitchen

This newfound love for my sister, I never professed to her. Perhaps it's an Asian thing – a rather common excuse I'd given, over the years, for many things to which I cannot explain my awkwardness. Perhaps it's because I suspect she already knows.

Or perhaps it just doesn't matter at all because she's always loved me unconditionally since I was a little girl of six, when this nine-year-old child herself asked me to hang up a sock over my bed because Santa was coming, only to use all her savings to buy a squeaky, furry toy mouse that she'd stuff into my sock that very night as I slept.

In 10 days, I'll be visiting her newborn and her in their newly adopted city of Shanghai. I cannot wait to pick up where we'd left off.



Una Ragazza and her sister comparing girths when the latter was five months pregnant

(Some pictures taken from the Internet)

Rojak Timeout (Part Deux, by Happy Belly)

After the first Bangkok situation report by Happy Belly came out earlier this week, we received messages from quite a few concerned ESPL readers regarding her safety. Here is an update on her situation.

It was the phone that very rudely jolted me awake at 8.30 a.m. on Wednesday.

“The crackdown has begun. It looks bad. I’m flying home today. You should leave too,” said my Singaporean friend who also works in Bangkok.

“Huh, OK, let me think about it.”

I was still groggy from sleeping at 2 a.m. after my movie marathon the previous night. Struggling to open my eyes, I reached for my home to check the latest Twitter updates. (By the way, Twitter is the best thing ever for crisis situations. TV and radio are slow, and in Thailand, censored too.)

The picture didn’t look good but it didn’t warrant fleeing. Yet.

Two hours later, while I was sitting down to a breakfast of bad news and a ham-and-cheese sandwich, my Aussie neighbour came to say that they were starting to burn tyres in a street near our apartment.

I lost my appetite.

TV news further confirmed that the protesters might spill inwards from the main road. Plus, a stage had been set up near my place where some 1,500 renegade protesters were gathered. And if the troops bulldozed that place, there were only that many streets that they could spill into, one of which would be mine.

Stay or leave – it was a very difficult decision. I’d never liked running away from anything. But the thought of being totally sealed in by an angry mob was equally choking. I could have stayed at a hotel where some of my colleagues were staying but I wasn’t entirely confident that that stretch would be spared.

So I up and left on a one-way ticket to Singapore. As the hard-to-find taxi drove to the airport, my heart sank as I passed the scenes of destruction all around me. The Land of Smiles is irrevocably scarred. I got to the airport by 1.30 p.m., having swung by the bank to take out some cash just five minutes before it closed.

As I waited for the next five hours at the departure gate, it was with both horror and relief as I followed the nightmare unfolding on Twitter. Shopping centres were on fire and my favourite cinemas had collapsed. Electricity and phone signals were both cut. It was a city run amok.

It was only when I came back to Singapore that I realised how living on the edge of violence had taken its strange toll on me. When there was thunder last night, I woke up with a start thinking it was an explosion. Or when the helicopters flew past in the morning, I felt the familiar fear grip my heart that the troops were coming.

No one knows when this will end but I need to go back soon. My two hamsters need me.

Rojak Timeout (by Happy Belly)

Just like the spicy rojak salad dish, the postings here are about anything and everything under the sun. They're meant to make you a keen, lean, lovin' Internet machine as you wait for the next story to be posted by our authors.

Today's Rojak Timeout is by Happy Belly in Thailand.


***
Happy Belly says:

My neighbourhood the battle zone

For the first time in my six years in Bangkok, I went to the supermarket on Sunday morning to seriously stock up my fridge. Not my usual flippant two tubes of Pringles and one pack of Kit Kat but proper rice and canned food.





When I got to Tops, it seemed that the entire neighbourhood had the same idea – and had emptied the shelves. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Not during the coup, not during other mass protests.

I’d left the stocking up a bit late and there was no fresh food to be had. No pork, no chicken, no beef, except for some $60 airflown Aussie beef that no one had touched. Even the remaining veggies looked sad and stringy. I had to scramble for whatever was left because it certainly felt as though locusts had descended on the supermarket.



The expatriates were loading their shopping carts with frozen pizzas, pasta sauces, canned tuna, wine, milk and bread. The locals on the other hand were going for instant noodles, canned sardines and soft drinks. At least there wasn’t going to be a fight there. What else do people buy in a crisis? Toilet paper and sanitary napkins were apparently top picks.

No one – I suspect not even the government – had expected the situation to end up in such a protracted state of violence across the city. The clashes that began on Thursday night had killed 33 and injured 239 across Bangkok by Sunday night.



Many of those killed were innocent civilians. A taxi driver who dropped off a passenger got shot in his lung. A charity medic got killed while trying to help an injured protester. A singer and his friend were on the balcony of his 27th floor apartment. Both got shot, one died.



My apartment is just three short streets away from one of the deadliest flash points between troops and protesters. On Saturday, I had felt safe enough to go for a walk and ambled down the alleys that led to the disputed road (see photos) but by Sunday I wasn’t going anywhere near there.

The road which I take to go to work is now a battlefield between the troops (with their rifles and live ammunition) and the protesters (with their mini Molotov cocktails and firecrackers). The spot where the first fatality fell is a few steps from my favourite roast duck shop. The street where I take a motorcycle taxi from went up in flames.



There’s no immediate end in sight, despite the government’s repeated assurance that they have everything under control. The violence is escalating and spreading to more spots in the city and neighbouring provinces. The protesters are willing to negotiate but the government says it’s gone beyond the point of negotiation.



Violence begets violence. And the people who suffer are the residents in the hot zones where smoke plumes, gunshots and explosions reign. There are many who have no access to food because stepping out of their apartment means walking straight into the live firing range.

As for me, I’m going to hole up in my apartment – not that I have a choice since I’m effectively sealed in with all the roadblocks around – eat up all the food in my fridge and hope that the supermarket restock the shelves soon.

Horse with No Name on Shop: Not a Mall World after all

It took us a whole month in Arizona to see the inside of one mall. Count them: One. Singular. Uno.

It wasn't that I'd become a shopping celibate since we moved here. Quite the opposite, actually: Since we landed in Arizona last November, my husband and I have, very possibly, revived the American economy - by shopping online 24/7. (Hooray for free shipping!)



You see, the reason we physically covered just one mall in over a month is because there is only one major shopping centre around here for miles and miles around.

And by shopping center, I mean, a multi-storey building housing at least one department stores or smaller shops and/or a food court – much like what we're used to in Singapore.

Now, we don't exactly live in the boondocks. I don't walk out the door and see cows and sheep or acres of farmland. But suffice to say, we're in a pretty newly developed neck of suburban southwest Arizona. Much of the view surrounding the neatly landscaped, brown-colored housing here is matching dry, brown desert, followed by more dusty, dry, brown desert. You get the idea.

Being a city girl at heart, I'm used to having all my amenities within walking distance, no matter where in the world I travel. So it was a huge shock to my system to have to (gasp) drive ten minutes to the nearest grocery store just to pick up a quart of milk.

But the very Singaporean concept of a “one-stop shop” seems pretty foreign around these parts. Most of the so-called shopping centers here are actually a handful of single-storey standalone stores clustered in large compounds.


A handful of standalone stores are what make up a shopping centre in this neck of the woods.

Sure, there are places like Target and Walmart, where you can buy groceries and sundries under one roof. But it's not quite the same thing as the full-blown Orchard Road shopping mall experience.


The upside of standalone stores? Awesome variety.

So after a month of mall withdrawal, we said, enough, and hastily googled the nearest one we could find. It was 12.8 miles away – technically a 20-minute drive. No worries. That's like a trip from Punggol to Marine Parade, right? Wrong. Especially if, as neighborhood newbies, you forego the high stress of highway driving for arterial roads, which effectively double your travel time.

But being unabashed mall rats, we sought out our elusive cheese. Hungrily. Not rain, nor hail, nor road works, nor screaming children on a 40-minute car-ride were going to deny us our shopping fix.

Boy, were we in for a surprise...

Mauled mall

I was always under the impression – thanks to too much American television – that a mall experience here would be the shopping equivalent of finding the holy grail: shiny, uplifting, with a choir of angels singing in the background as I walked through the sliding doors.

This mall was, indeed, an artifact of sorts – dusty, dark, and looking as if it had been buried underground and forgotten by humans for a good long while.

Nonetheless, the older kid, Sweetpea, needed furniture, so we gamely trawled each and every department store we came to. Two hours and many unstable, slightly unhinged, and rattly bedframes later, we decided the place just wasn't for us.

Deflated, but undefeated, we returned home to google a new destination – it was 32 miles away.



It began to to dawn on me why America is the birthplace of online shopping. When you have to jump in the car and drive three miles just to buy a quart of milk, sitting in front of the computer and getting stuff to come to you is plainly a whole lot easier.

Even Sweetpea, who's six years old, cottoned on to that fact early on, when I fancied a long afternoon shop at the humongous craft superstore nearby. (And by nearby, I mean, a ten-minute drive and another twenty minutes spent hauling children in and out of the car).

“Can't you just order the stuff online, Mom? I'm tired. I don't want to go out,” she grumbles, eyes never leaving her computer game.

“No, it's not the same thing. I want to see exactly what I'm getting.”

“But it's just felt. And cloth. Why do you need to feel it? And the UPS guy will bring it here tomorrow if you order it now.”

“But...”

“He brings stuff everyday for Daddy. He can bring your stuff too. And Daddy says shipping is free on Amazon, right?”



That new black magic

Did I mention people go a little crazy shopping online when they arrive in the United States because of the free shipping?

Case in point: I am now on a first-name basis with the UPS delivery guy because my husband orders something from Amazon every other day.

I must confess, it is rather exciting to be getting so many packages in the mail, even if they aren't for me. But when does the lure of free shipping turn your brain to mush, and make you start adding everything in sight to your online cart?

Apparently, in a matter of minutes. I'm a fairly experienced online shopper back home in Singapore, but because of shipping costs from the United States, I tend to watch for sales so I can get everything I want at a single go. And Amazon, that coy mistress, requires such surreptitiousness – Vposts, American mailing addresses. It's almost a cloak-and-dagger affair trying to get a couple of books sent over to Singapore.

No such problem here. Shipping is free, remember? And so I spend a couple of hours happily clicking my family into debt until my husband rings, and I can literally hear his eyes bug out over the phone at my shopping list.

“(Tense pause) OK, I see your point about your super extra-special nursing bras. Everyone needs underwear. But do we really need organic crib sheets? Can't the baby sleep on regular sheets?”

“But she has eczema! You don't want your baby to be scarred for life, do you? Plus I'm getting the mid-range ones. It won't cost a thing! Free shipping, remember?”

“Ok, fine. But I draw the line at the organic diapers.”

Oh poo.

Chrysalis on Love: Driving Me Nuts

For someone like me who is so accustomed to Singapore’s efficient public transport system, the need to drive to run the simplest of errands is, needless to say, the hardest to get used to.

Sure, I already had my Class 2 license which I had routinely achieved after I graduated from university. But being fresh into the working force, having a car was certainly not at the top of my priority list.

Okay, the truth is: There isn’t a real need to own a car and be able to drive, is there, in Singapore?



But it’s a totally different story in Australia where I currently reside with my hub and three kids. Arriving in Melbourne heavily pregnant with my third child two years ago, I wasn’t exactly gearing up to drive around to explore the sights and sounds of Victoria. After the youngest one K turned two months old, the hub suggested that I should start getting behind the wheel.


This marked the start of my love-hate relationship with driving, which has also taken my insecurities for a whirlwind spin.


Maybe it was the postnatal hormones talking but I was petrified at the thought of getting lost in a foreign country. Plus, I have not driven in a decade since getting my license and my motor skills and sense of direction were practically non-existent.


Before I could stage a louder protest, the hub began to assure me by saying that Victoria is very easy to drive around due to its grid system. Whenever you missed a turn, you could try turning into the next road or lane and more often than not, you would be able to get yourself out of trouble, he said.






It's been one year since I had started driving in Melbourne, and I have to agree with the hub. Roads are wider and Australians are, by and large, patient drivers.

I could count only twice when I had been honked at – once for failing to give away to the vehicle on my right in a roundabout (they have many in Australia!) and another when scaredy-cat yours truly hit the brakes when making a right turn, frustrating a car full of hoons (a term used in Australia and New Zealand to refer to people who are engaged in anti-social behavior) behind me.


Now, back to my love-hate affair with driving...


On one hand, if I could help it, I would prefer to be the passenger, not the driver. Multitasking is definitely not my forte. “Watch your steering, don’t veer. Check your mirrors every few seconds. Don’t just look in front. Check your blind spot, only turn your head a bit, not too much!” barked the hub. Just too much to process for someone who knows she isn’t cut out to be a pilot by a long shot.



On the other hand, being able to go places on my four wheels is liberating. After being stuck at home for a year (my hub had the use of the car until recently when his office moved to the city and it was cheaper to take the train), I suddenly found my wings and also became Minister of Home Affairs with an actual portfolio. Previously, I was a minister only in name. I didn’t have to grocery shop nor pick up the kids. The hub did everything as he had our all-important Ford Falcon.



Now things have changed dramatically, and for the better.


I now know where to get the cheapest meats and vegetables. The Vietnamese coffee stall owner has seen me enough to strike up a conversation in halting Mandarin and Cantonese. And whenever I feel like it, I can head to the shopping malls where previously the thought of lugging a bulky stroller up a bus or a train was enough to put me off going out. Venturing further is now within my reach and my goal now is to explore new places for shopping, food and play.



Long gone are the days where I find myself excusing my way out of driving. I guess what they say is true however cliché it sounds: To get over your fears, you need to face them head on. And that’s what I did and boy, am I glad I did.

Rojak Timeout (by Una Ragazza)

We know it's no fun to visit a blog and find there's nothing new to see and read.

Before you can say "Bah! B-b-borrrringggg!" and sail away for good, let us entertain you with a little song and dance at Rojak Timeout.

Just like the spicy rojak salad dish, the postings here are about anything and everything under the sun. They're meant to make you a keen, lean, lovin' Internet machine as you wait for the next story to be posted by our authors.

Today's Rojak Timeout is by Una Ragazza, the brains behind the Eat, Shop, Play, Love blog.



***
Una Ragazza says:

People have been asking us how this writing experiment got started. After all, most of us have never even spoken to one another on the phone or Internet, let alone met face to face.

Blame it on one ambitious New Year resolution: "C'mon, how hard can it be to get a bunch of women to type some lines about their lives every couple of weeks? It's like old-school diary writing, no?"

Here are the 10 things we didn't plan for when we first signed up for this:

10. Mommies with newborns get two hours of me-time each day (sleep not included). Will write later when I can keep my eyes open.

9. Internet connection in Indonesia is as fast as a becak (trishaw) or bajaj (see below).



8. Boyfriend or husband changed his mind about being featured in our painstakingly-written stories.

7. Writing about myself means everybody will hear me talk about myself? Hmm. Can I drop out?

6. Watching the Bangkok rioting outside the window is more interesting. I'll write when the shootings and explosions end.



5. Stuck in Paris because of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano. No laptop, so went shopping instead.

4. Got a better job, going for a month-long holiday. Will write when I get back!

3. I'm losing steam. If we don't launch the blog soon, I'll quit.

2. Boss fired everybody but me in the department. Company facing legal suit. No time left to write!

1. Let's have a team meeting on Skype! Oh wait, which day and time zone are you talking about?

So we decided we will shoot for a modest twice-weekly posting of stories. This writing experiment is certainly doubling up as a social experiment on the lives of busy Singaporean women. Write us, if you have an interest to join this circle. A bigger sample size always makes for a better experiment!

(Pictures taken from the Internet)

Shakeleg on Eat: Tummy Troubles

Adventurous foreigners bragged about tucking into bizarre local cuisines like crunchy goat's testicles, sweet-and-sour bats and fried dog meat in Indonesia.

All I had was a piece of "bakwan" (prawn fritter) bought from a street vendor in downtown Jakarta and I was cursed with explosive diarrhea for three months.



And I dropped eight kilograms!

Talk about losing weight fast, and naturally. It wasn't, however, painless.

I remember being on the phone with my boss discussing work when suddenly, I felt a strange wave in my stomach. The next second, I was a human Merlion.



"Are you okay? Do you want me to call the doctor?" he asked. Uwekkk.

"You don't have to suffer alone. Answer me," he said. Uwekkk.

He offered to send me to the hospital but I felt too sick to get out of my apartment.

Also, when you feel like death is near, it's difficult to accept quacks disguised as doctors telling you that whatever you're having is "nothing serious but due to wind entering your body."

Unfortunately, that was not a joke. "Masuk angin" which literally means "enter wind" is the standard diagnosis for most types of ailments. Colds, coughs and diarrhea all fall under the "enter wind" category which require a "push wind" (or "tolak angin" in Bahasa Indonesia) treatment.



Depending on where the doctor received his education, cure may be in the form of invasive needles, expensive Western medicine, or a homemade potion of three tablespoons of soy sauce mixed with lime juice. Farting, burping or drawing a coin over your oiled back repeatedly until your skin turns red and sore can help, too.

That fateful, tragic night, I passed out in the loo. Alone. I woke up the next morning finding myself lying in a fetal position in the bathroom.

My boss ordered me to stay home for a few days but for the next three months or so, I walked around with a leaky tap in my rear.

Drip, drip, drippety drop. My fragile Singapore tummy is indeed a flop.

My Indonesian friends berated me for being reckless and taunted me with horror stories of unhygienically-prepared street food contaminated with feces and laced with cyanide (kidding!).

"Sometimes, the hawkers use rotten meat . . ." "Sometimes, they use rat meat instead of beef . . ." "Sometimes, they fry the oil together with the plastic bag it's in so you're actually eating melted plastic . . ." They took turns to chip in.

I swore off eating street food, but only for a while.







They are irresistably yummy and cheap. For a Singapore dollar or two, I can get a generous serving of fried rice, bakso meatball soup noodles or a dozen sticks of satay. Ooh, God bless the skinny Indonesian cows which had to die in the name of making those tasty skewered grilled meat drenched in peanut sauce!

I've wisened up, though. Now before making a purchase, I will quickly inspect the food cart and ensure the vendor and his surroundings are acceptably clean.

I still get diarrhea but each bout lasts just two to three days. Maybe my stomach has toughened up.

Luckily, like Singapore, Indonesia is quite the food haven. There's a wide selection of international fare to choose from. Italian, Indian, Japanese, and Chinese restaurants are aplenty.

There are food outlets which claim to sell Singapore food like chicken rice, laksa and char kway teow. I traveled an hour to the upmarket district of Kemang one rainy day to try the roti prata but left disappointed. The prata bread was hard and the curry diluted.

Nasi uduk, or the Indonesian version of nasi lemak, is coconut rice with fried chicken, fried fermented bean and tofu served with a light brown paste that doesn't resemble or taste anything like Singapore's chilli sambal. And there are no cucumber slices, fried anchovies and omelette.

Food names can also be deceiving.

Murtabak, or "marthabak" over here, is not prata bread with meat filling. It is actually apam balik – a crispy pancake filled with sugared peanut paste that you can easily find at Joo Chiat night bazaars during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

But having grown up with my mother's Malay-style cooking, what I really need most are regular doses of chilli and spice or I'll get cranky. Padang food is similar to Malay food. Acehnese food comes a close second.

But prices at Padang restaurants like Natrabu can be outrageous and the dishes are left sitting on open shelves for hours, exposed to dangerous elements like hungry cats, flies and pollution.

So, what must a weak-stomached fussy Minah do?

Cook lah, sayang.



One of the most thoughtful farewell gifts I had received must be from my mother. She had painstakingly penned the recipes of all my favourite homecooked dishes in a notebook and given it to me just before I left for the airport in October 2008. I cried non-stop on the plane.

You see, my mother expresses her love through food. Thanks to her fabulous cooking, I'm more likely to die from obesity than anorexia.

She was not happy about my moving to Jakarta. While journalistic work was the official reason I gave, she suspected it was an excuse for cheap thrills.

"I know you're going there to play. You want to feel earthquakes and see bombings, right? Not scared of terrorists and thieves catching you, huh? Stubborn girl," she nagged disapprovingly.

Despite her protests, giving me that recipe book was her way of telling me she had given me her blessings.

And so, I started cooking, which comes with its own set of challenges and misadventures fit for another post.



My mother had visited me and I had worked up a sweat frying her noodles from her recipe book.

"OK. I give you an A," she said.

If cooking is the labor of love, her verdict must be the music of life.