I look Taiwanese

You know you like this as much as I do.
Dinner at a Hawker Centre.
Indian food at Holland Village.


Last night was terrifying. Lily and I were happily sitting in our little living room eating our Kaya toast (kaya is a jam made out of eggs, sugar and coconut milk, and it is eaten everywhere here), when suddenly we heard an abnormally loud buzzing sound coming from the bedroom. Our decadently toasted midnight snack was ruined when we found a 2 inch gi-normous bee or wasp buzzing around in the light at the bedroom doorway. We stood in the living room staring at it reassuring each other that it would not find its way out. Unfortunately it did and our little midnight drama began. We spent over an hour trying to simultaneously attack and hide from this alien bee monster. Well really, I was doing the hiding while Lily was doing the attacking. Finally after it had been sprayed with mosquito repellent, beaten up with a telephone book a few times, and trapped inside a plastic container and placed outside our door, were we able to retreat back to bed. It was traumatizing and hilarious all at the same time. I don't know what I would have done without Lily. That thing was definitely extraterrestrial.

Moving on to the important stuff. Yesterday we visited a Clan Ancestral Hall. When we got there we were presented with pre-made name tags and were greeted by the entire board committee. They gave us a presentation about the make up of races within Singapore, and spoke heavily on filial piety and the festival of Qing Ming. There used to be a cemetery underneath the shopping mall nearby and everything was moved in order to create this mall. The clan fought for its right and won only 3% of the land, and now the ashes of everyone from the cemetery have been moved to the Ancestral Hall. Today during morning lecture we discussed how we all felt towards the Clan and their approaches to welcoming us. Michelle felt it to be rather disrespectful for them to lead us around like a tour guide and allowing us to take photos when it should have been a place for the dead to rest in peace. Many of us also felt that a lot of it was propaganda for the clan because of the extravagant hospitality that they provided, and the fact that they were filming us and taking photos of us, and had also set up the entire board committee and given us a powerpoint presentation before we were allowed to look around the area. Some others felt that although it was propaganda they had the right to want to show the place to others because they had worked so hard to fight for it, and that any publicity was a good thing.

Personally, I didn't feel like it was a place where I would go to pay respects to my ancestors. While Graham felt that it is a great thing to take photographs and show people the deceased, I, much like Michelle, have been brought up to think that people should be quiet and respectful around places like these. It really wasn't even until Michelle had told me about her feelings did I realize that there were actually deceased people's ashes being kept there. Prior to that, I had gotten the feeling that it was more like a museum that we were visiting. As a child I was told not to look at other people's tombstones which would give me the sense that tourists walking around looking at other people's ashes would in fact be disrespectful. I'm not sure if that is a Taiwanese thing or a Canadian thing, like Graham had mentioned, but it's interesting that everyone got a different feeling out of the visit, especially since at many times the Singaporean students tended to differ from the UBC students.

During the presentation I found out that there is an extremely large Hokkien population within Singapore. Hokkien is basically the same language as Taiwanese, and if you visited hawker food stalls you would oftentimes find pronunciations written underneath dishes to be Hokkien. This seemed really friendly to me because I'm from Taiwan and I've never heard anyone else speak the language anywhere outside of Taiwan before. The population here is so mixed that on the Singapore resident identity card there is a category that states your race. It may say Malay, Chinese, Indian, or Other. We spoke a little about the "other," mainly the Eurasian group as well as the mixed group. Amandae brought up the term "Chindian" used in Singapore for the mixed race of Chinese and Indians. I found this interesting because the mixed race culture in Vancouver is predominately White and Asian or White and Black etc. I hardly ever hear about "Chindians," and yet it is so widespread in Singapore that there is actually a term for it. It is also interesting to note that while Canada's national languages are English and French, Singapore's is English and your own mother tongue. Often when I walk down the street and read street signs, the same sentence will be written in 4 or more different languages, which is really rare anywhere else.

Alright, enough of that, let me tell you about dinner last night. We went to a hawker centre. For those of you that are unaware of what that is, it is a place much like a food court outdoors. Apparently in the past all the food stalls along the streets, that are very much a part of Asian street food culture, were moved to enclosed locations and made to be more sanitary and more food court-like under the law. So now basically if you're looking for street food, the most you'll find are probably hawker centres (unless you're talking about rectangular shaped ice cream from a cart!) The food there was really good although I was already really full before I even got there. I swear I've been eating nonstop for the past 2 weeks.

Today we visited the Singapore National Museum. It was the most amazing museum I have ever seen. We were all given little highly technologically advanced machinery draped around our necks with headphones. When we entered each exhibit there would be a number on the floor and we would punch in that number and our little machine would tell us the story and history of whatever it was that we were looking at. It was really cool and really informative. I enjoyed how you could walk around by yourself and listen to what you chose to listen to and linger around the areas that interested you more. It had stories about Singapore's history, as well as a food and fashion exhibit. Afterwards when the class split up, the Taiwan clan (as Graham likes to call us) headed over to Bugis Junction (pronounced: boogus), which is a mall, to walk around. We mainly chose to go there because we love saying the name so much. Bugis. We then found our own way around again over to Little India which is supposedly exactly like a "little India." Oh yea, by the way, I have never been so aware or informed by others that I in fact do look Taiwanese. In fact, no one has ever distinctly said to me YOU LOOK TAIWANESE, but apparently to some of the people in Singapore, I actually DO look Taiwanese, not HK, not Chinese, but Taiwanese. Amandae had said to Fu before that apparently we look more Taiwanese than Lily and Michelle, which I found to be really interesting because I had never gotten that before, and today while we walked through little India, someone sitting there just randomly looked at me and said "Taiwan?" Haha. It's quite interesting. Evidently, many Singaporeans are fascinated with Taiwanese media, much like the way Taiwan is fascinated with Korean media. It's weird. So perhaps people in Singapore are better at knowing what is Taiwanese and what is not? Now that I think of it, I have heard a lot of Jay Chou in Singapore, and I do see S.H.E. on clothing advertisements, and I have also turned on the TV to find Taiwan talk shows playing on some of the channels. I also find it interesting that Singapore barely produces its own products, and that almost everything consumed here is imported from somewhere else. I guess in this way Singapore is able to preserve their cleaner air and water in comparison to other Asian countries.

After Little India we took a bus to Holland Village, an area that consists of many restaurants and bars. We found an Indian restaurant and had dinner there. I'm pooped now. My feet need rest. We're going to the zoo and the night safari tomorrow. I will need to load up on the deet.

Wow...I talked a lot today. Till then.