Food – Page 4

A mooncake is a muffin-sized Chinese dessert that is traditionally eaten around this time. The occasion? A traditional Chinese festival called the ‘Mid-Autumn Festival‘, with its roots in moon worship and harvest celebrations. Legend has it that messages were hidden inside mooncakes – much like in fortune cookies, the idea being that the medium of communication could be eaten to destroy the evidence – exhorting the masses to rise in revolt that ultimately lead to the Ming revolution.

Although messages are no longer hidden in mooncakes, they are still an integral part of the festivities. My local Singaporean neighbour next room tells me that these days modern mooncakes come with a range of fillings – durian, chocolate, orange – even ice cream! I wanted to try out a traditional mooncake, one which has a filling of lotus seed paste.

Don’t let the variety of colours fool you! The mooncakes themselves are all the same flavour. It’s hard to describe the taste. With lotus seed paste filling, these mooncakes were slightly sweet and chewy but without any discernible taste that I could make out. I can’t imagine myself enjoying eating this during a normal meal as a dessert though, unless it’s one of the fancy-schamncy ‘new-style’ mooncakes that have more palatable fillings.

The NTU Chinese Society held a celebration on our campus at the Chinese Heritage Centre on the day of the festival (17th September). I regret not being able to attend that since I was simply so tired that day! Instead, I went to the nearby Chinese Garden in Singapore where celebrations were being held over a week.

Reaching Chinese Garden is easy – the entrance is right outside the exit of the namesake MRT station. Follow the path to reach the Red Bridge lighted with red lanterns – red being an auspicious colour in Chinese tradition. At the very end of the bridge, before you enter the gardens, you’ll come across two marble lions ‘guarding’ the entrance.

(Took me a long time to get this picture right. Couldn’t use flash as the range as the objects were out of range, and had to keep my hand rock steady as I was shooting in low light. Had a long exposure shutter for this one.)

I was blown away by the astonishing variety of lanterns that I saw there! The picture above was taken from the lakeshore, where there were lanterns floating in the water. These – and other lanterns – that people were carrying aren’t electrical lanterns but traditional fire-lit ones!

Chinese Garden Singapore Tower (3) — Ru Yun T'a Pagoda

The Mid-Autumn Festival is very much a family affair. All around the garden, there were families and friends gathered together having a picnic and lighting sparklers. Also, this festival might as well be the Chinese equivalent of Valentine’s Day. Some of the more traditional (?) family groups were lighting candles instead. Unlike Diwali celebrations in India, usage of fireworks was subdued. None of the loud ‘bombs’ that I hate.

I was tired after a day of recording the first Spectrum TV episode, but I had one more stop before I headed back home. The Ru Yun T’a pagoda is a seven-storey structure at entrance station close to the MRT station. I doubled back to the entrance I came from.

The design is based on the Ling Ku Temple in Nanking. Not until I was right at the footstep of the pagoda staircase did I realize that climbing to the top might be a challenge when I was dog-tired! The architecture places a strong emphasis on symmetry – both the exterior and the interior.

I know that pagodas are supposed to be places of worship, so I found this place intriguing. There didn’t seem to be any sort of scripture, prayer room, inscription, idol or any religious paraphernalia to indicate this was a place a worship. Possibly because this was built as a tourist attraction?

Each storey of the pagoda has a viewing balcony. I climbed the spiral staircase to the top, where the height affords a view of the whole festival area. I was expected there would be hawker stalls to try out Chinese cuisine but I didn’t come across any. Anyway, my day ended on a high – with a climb to the top of a seven-storey tower. 🙂

More pictures from the festival in my photo gallery for Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival 2010 in Singapore.

I realise that I haven’t made a single blog post yet about my shift to Singapore yet. I was dealing with my debilitating caffeine addiction, craving to buy notebooks at ungodly hours of the night, settling in, and murdering my conscience.

Right off the bat, you can’t find Mountain Dew (okay, not everywhere) or chewing gum in this place, so those are two obsessive-compulsive habits snatched away from me like a toy from a baby. You know what’s worse? Whether it’s on campus or places around campus, you simply can’t find good coffee shops in NTU.

They call it kopi here (it’s a Malay / Indonesian word) and it’s sweet and milky shit – not very much unlike South Indian filter coffee. There’s a variation called kopi-o which is black coffee without milk…but still with a fuckload of sugar.

Now I hear what you’re saying – why not just ask for a regular cup o’ joe? You think I haven’t thought of that already? Most of the coffee here is served from pre-prepared metal containers in canteens – or from vending machines. Vending machines that spew out coffee with milk and sugar when you ask for it black. It’s a daily struggle, I tell you.

This is a big climbdown from Surrey, where we had three Starbucks outlets on campus with Costa Coffee and many other quaint coffee shops within walking distance. (One of the Starbucks we have is a 250-seater cafe which is one of the biggest Starbucks in Europe.)

I’m so caffeine-starved that I’m thinking of making my own coffee in the hall of residence kitchen. If it weren’t for the fact that our kitchens only have microwave ovens and this video has freaked me out, I’d have given this a shot already.

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Me: Maybe we can test the efficiency of voice recognition software with different accents.

Guy 1: How about dropping an egg from a height attached to different types of parachutes and see which one’s best? Or how about seeing whether a laptop’s heat can be used to fry an egg? Or devising a way to drop an egg from a height without it getting damaged?

Girl: Let’s test the effect of Red Bull on fishes.

Guy 2: My idea is…wait, what?

Girl: Yes, let’s mix a fish’s food / water with Red Bull and then see what happens to it. They might swim faster. Questions?

Me: Can I have your phone number?

I disagree on the point that fishes will start swimming faster. In my opinion, the best way of going about this is closely observe any blogs / Twitter feeds the fishes have and checking whether they’ve made any posts about sleep-drunkenness.

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NTU Union Day ad — NTU Student Union Day innovative outdoor campaign

So yeah, NTU. This place is simply massive. You can keep trudging for hours on end to go from one lecture hall block to another. There are about 600-1000 students for each batch of each department that justifies the investment in real-estate this university has put in. Buildings are also spread further apart. I don’t mind walking since I’ve become used to in the UK now, but it’s the hot and humid weather that saps out my energy.

NTU Singapore TV Studio — Spectrum TV studio at NTU

I’m also working with the student TV station here – called Spectrum TV – and their TV studio is “sweet mother of Alanus Morissette”-huge in proportion. I’ll be working here as VT playback operator, post production editor, and on a features team producing a segment like Mythbusters. Already working on our first episode that will be recorded live-to-tape this week.

I’ve had to take on a particularly heavy load of courses since I have to take courses from the electronic engineering, computer engineering, and computer science departments here to maintain compatibility with Surrey. (There’s no degree or double major as ‘Electronics & Computers Engineering’ here.) Many Oriental professors can’t pronounce the letter ‘l’ properly, which means that we are sometimes referred to as ‘erectronic engineering’ students.

I arrived ‘late’ compared to most other exchange students so I haven’t had the time to explore many places yet. I also unfortunately got food poisoning (some other friends got it too) after we ate at a dodgy place after a party. Missed out a trip to Malacca subsequently. I’ve slowly been exploring Singapore when my timetable permits.

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I’ve had a few requests to make a blog post showing funny signs, so here ’tis. I’ll sign off here.

Mayonnaise and Ketchup Pringles crisps — Mayonnaise and ketchup flavoured Pringles-like chips

When I saw this at the on-campus supermarket, it was like love at first sight. Surely such a flavour had been invented only for a person like me? Well, don’t try it. It’s all levels of terrible, just as you’d expect.

At the local Courts Digital consumer electronics store.

Random banner outside one of the lecture theatre blocks here. No explanation as to why we should know this.

Technically, this is cheating since this photo was shot at a gift shop in Delhi airport and isn’t a sign. Still, why would anyone want to gift an Indian-style toilet? That would be an oddly-specific and passive-aggressive way of telling somebody that they are a piece of shit.