Ate half a bowl of leftover, reheated kitsune udon from 2 days ago.

Slice of toasted wheat bread with salmon cream cheese.

Coca-Cola (which tastes different here than in the US, less bite to it).

Slices of 3 various little pizzas from one of the ex-pat bars at the end of the street. Thin, flabby, anemic crust... nice for appetizers or bar snacks I suppose, unsatisfactory for dinner.

Ill after returning from Thailand... haven't felt much like eating, and keeping food down has been something of a challenge. Had a fever last night, as high as 101.5 F at one point. Eventually it began to abate, and I almost felt hungry, so was able to down a banana, some crackers and some milk. Had some fruit this morning, some orange juice, a little cereal (which was a bit vulcanized... welcome to the tropics) and 2 vegetable bao. Still feel like shit, but at least I'm eating.


"Breakfast is a sad experience"
- Graham Lewis as HALO, "Skip the Sausage"

Breakfast: Small muffin grabbed from the hotel buffet.

Lunch: Fruit from the floating market about an hour outside of Bangkok. Fresh and fried bananas, mango, pomelo and rambutans!

Cocktail: Went on the Marriot's happy hour boat cruise thingy, had a Singapore Sling and some assorted little munchies which they provided.

Dinner: Went out wandering up and down the street, guesstimate I walked about a mile round trip... was thinking of grabbing something grilled on a stick from a street vendor, but instead I just kept going, in part because I was unsure how to conduct a transaction in a language I don't understand a word of. (save for maybe "tom yam goong" and "pad thai"') I realized that in Tokyo, and even Viet Nam to some extent, I had a decided advantadge over my present situation. Shit, I could barely even remember what fish sauce is called in Thai earlier this afternoon. (it's "nam pla", I eventually recalled)

Eventually ended up coming back by the hotel, and after realizing my PDA was an hour ahead (still on Singapore time) and that I had an hour or so before the restaurants in the little attatched mall closed, ducked into one, embarassingly sweating profusely after my little exercise session. The big flipbook picture menu outside was replaced by a much more extensive, and slightly bewildering, menu once I was seated. Decided on a "shake with watermelon", which was actually more of a watermelon juice slush, very nice... and an order of fried squid and morning glory flower salad with an order of steamed rice. It was quite excellent and very much reminded me of a dish I used to get at a little Vietnamese place named Asiana up on Clark Street in Chicago. They did thiers with eggplant, but the approach and taste was somewhat similar... with the eggplant (not sure what specific kind they used) fried in a light, crispy, tempura-like coating and served with a healthy drizzling of sweet and slightly spicy fish sauce. Wonderful stuff.

Like with the Hong Kong dollar, I'm having a bit of difficulty wrapping my head around the Thai baht to US dollar conversion equation, or at least difficulty doing it in my head, but doing the math now it looks like my dinner cost about $3.80 US. (157 baht) Not a huge dinner by any means, but certainly very reasonably priced.

Breakfast: We were going to go to a local kopitiam up Killiney Road, but it was pretty crowded and my mother spazzed out and directed everyone to some gwei lo looking place a few doors down. Had the "Healthy Breakfast" with lime juice and tea.

Drink: Peach aloe vera jelly drink and salted plums from 7-Eleven.

Lunch: Had a plate of rojak from a hawker in Chinatown and a canned soursop juice. Rojak was okay, a little too much sauce for my liking. Canned soursop is always underwhelming.

Breakfast: A few chunks of Pillsbury branded (!) Roti pratah, dipped in sugar. Juice.

Lunch: Went with the extended family to Little India. Had chicken tikka masala, palak paneer, assorted naan, ladyfingers, assorted curried mixed vegetables, another type of chicken hose name I can't recall, (green and very tasty from a marinade of spinach, corriander, mint, etc.) a mutton dish, biriyanai, mango juice, mango lassi. On the way home stopped off for a soursop juice.

Dinner: Back around the corner to Sento again. My uncle really likes it, I think it's decent but nothing outstanding. I had an order of saba sushi, which had way too much rice... an unagi don, okay, so-so... and a Calpis. I think they gave me Calpis syrup over ice rather than a Calpis Water, even tho' thy asked me if I wanted a Calpis Water. It worked anyway.

Breakfast: Soggy, reheated leftover cheese pizza that my nephew ordered 2 nights ago. Some little walnut and fig cluster things and a scone. Electrolyte drink.

Lunch: Neglected to eat.

Dinner: Assorted munchies... boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce, lox and cream cheese on crackers with onions and capers, pepper crusted camembert, vegetable sticks, cheese cubes, finger sandwiches. Went on the Tiger brewery tour afterwards, and then had 2 beers and a few chewy little samosas and some more vegetable sticks. Ate some leftover turkey finger sandwiches, sliced watermelon and honeydew once back home.

Breakfast: A bit of Pandan poundcake, leftovers from lunch at the Beijing-style restaurant in Plaza Singapura the other day. I need tea...

Lunch: Vaguely Vietnamese restaurant in the Meridian mall... shared cold spring roll, shrimp on sugar cane for appetisers, had the seafood noodle lunch set for entree, lemongrass w/ lime drink. I miss sticky, stinky, pungent fish sauce. What passes for Viet cuisine here seems too fru-fru or too adapted to local tastes for my liking. Or maybe what I prefer is a different style of Vietnamese food?

Dinner: Big multi-course meal with my parents and relatives at Lei Garden in Chijmes... crispy needle fish, Peking duck, seafood stock and herb based soup, hairy crab dumpling, barbecue spareribs with fried buns, (sort of like a Chinese donut, sans hole) fish (garoupa?) with vegetables and fungus, baby kai lan, braised noddles with duck meat, chilled mango pudding, 2 kinds of tea, lime juice. Still finding things like this greasier than I prefer, and the taste of many of the items rather more "subtle" than I'm used to. Not to say it was bad, the soup was quite profound in an understated way, and the Peking duck was quite nice, but...

Other: Calamansi juice and kaya toast for a snack.

Breakfast: Prepack sushi from Cold Storage and kaya toast.

Lunch: 3 items and rice from the Orchard Emerald Centre food court... long beans, curried crunchy once-green mystery vegetable (bitter melon?) and pork something or other. Large soursop juice from the vendor on Orchard in front. Finished off the remainder of a flat Sapporo and had some squid shreds and miscellaneous little Japanese crackers and nuts.

Dinner: Went to Sento in StarHub with my relatives, had a Calpis & soju cocktail, some cold sake my uncle ordered, we all shared an order of okonomiyaki, (thicker and different than I expected, but good) and I had a tonkatsu and soba teishoku. The tonkatsu was good, very light and crispy... though they served it with ponzu instead of the typical tonkatsu sauce. The soba noodles were mushy and flavorless, and the broth was too greasy.

Breakfast: "Le Traditional" combination at Delifrance, orange juice, latte from Starbucks.

Lunch: Packaged kitsune udon, lime juice mixed with club soda, half a tuna sandwich.

Dinner: Rice noodle and shrimp stir fry, lime juice.

Breakfast: Had the "Brek O' Day" (scrambled eggs, chicken sausage, toast, fruit) and a large cafe latte at the local Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Orchard Road.

Lunch: Went to the Scotts Road Picnic food court, looking for the wonton soup I had liked last time I was here, but that vendor was no longer there. Decided on Ajisen instead and had the sushi set with iced green tea.

Dinner: Vietnamese place called Saigon City, up Killeny Road a few blocks from Orchard. Shared cha gio, goi cuon, chicken and green mango salad for appetizers. I had com thit heo (barbecued pork chop rice plate) for my entree, with a soda xi muoi. Not bad, but different from what I'm used to. I'm also remembering that food in general here sometimes seems to have less "oomph" than I generally prefer... whether that's a matter of me not yet getting into the groove of appreciating the subtlety of the flavors, if it's just the style here, if my taste buds are somehow fried as a result of the jet lag, or if I've just had a lot of less "intensely flavored" meals when I've been in Singapore, I'm not really sure.

Lunch: Shortly after arriving in Singpore went to Prima Taste in CentrePoint Mall... satay bee hoon ("with extra cockles") and a chin-chow (grass jelly drink), split some popia (spring roll-like things), an order of chai sum (a type of chinese broccoli, whih I can't really differentiate from gai lan, maybe it's just another name for it?) with my mom. Tried a bit of her Hainanese chicken rice, too. The bee hoon wasn't quite what I was expecting, coming with a coconut-based gravy (ala laksa) rather than being the pan-fried "noodles and grease" concotion I was thinking of. Wasn't bad tho'... then again, the miniscule portions of the airline meals had left me less than super picky at that point.

Had a Qoo orange beverage when I got back to my parents' house, diluted with water (too sweet!) and some Buderim Ginger Bears.

Dinner: Went to the food court below Orchard Emerald Plaza on the way back from Mr. Tan's lecture on Chinese brush painting. Had some bee hoon, (this time more like what I was expecting) a calamansi juice, and some little fried fish (i think) thing which they called a salad, but really it was more like heavily breaded fish sticks with a mayonnaise based dressing on the side. I guess "salad" means "comes with mayo-based goo" rather than "comes with lettuce". (which was pictured on the sign, but failed to materialize in reality).

Airline food... it's a bit of a blur, but I requested seafood meals on Singapore Air and recieved, at various times, and in no particular order... some sort of white fish (halibut?) in an olive oil and pesto-like sauce, with asparagus and potato... boiled shrimp appetizer with lemony dipping sauce... seafood skewer (scallop, shrimp, salmon, other stuff?) with bell peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, etc... and a bee hoon-like dish with scallop, shrimp, unidentified fish, etc.

All the usual little nondescript rolls, tea, juice, fruit salad, etc.

Had some Horlicks while stopped over in Hong Kong. ($8 HKD, I never get used to Hong Kong money... maybe it's because the unit is still called a dollar that it throws me for a loop.) I ordered cold, they gave me hot. No matter. I had wanted to get some bao or something else easy to take with to the gate, but it seemed everything was more geared to sit down eating so I just opted for the beverage. Starbuck's wasn't open, inexplicably. Not that I would have wanted to go there anyway.

Chicken and pineapple pizza from Amazona's, Coca-Cola.

Breakfast: Bowl of Safeway brand "Oats & Almonds" and "Corn Puffs" cereal with skim milk. Semi-flat Coke.

Late Lunch: Number 41 (bun cha gio) and a soda xi muoi at New Pagolac. Going off in search of another Coca-Cola. I've probably downed more Coke in the past 3 days than I have in the whole of the past 3 years.

Dinner: Amazonas was closed, so I swung over to the unremarkable, but still open, Four Star Pizza by Lake Merritt. 2 slices, one with pineapple and artichoke hearts, the other with mushrooms and garlic. Nowhere near as greasy and their slices usually are. Whether this is because I usually just order a cheese slice there and I'm more likely to notice the grease, or if it's due to something else, I do not know. Drank some leftover semi-flat frozen Coke to kill the heat from the excess of red pepper flakes I put on.

Lunch: More miscellaneous streamed bao, half a flat Coke, lots of water, 2 Chinese preserved plums.

Dinner: Two fish tacos, shrimp tostada and horchata from the Sinaloa mariscos truck. 1 liter Coca-Cola.

Other: The last two bao (one turnip strip, one Chinese cabbage) and more Coke for a midnight snack. Finished off the little bit of leftover rice in the fridge, topped with natto, furikake and the last ume boshi before heading off to bed.

Breakfast: Not-quite-nasi goreng for breakfast, made of rice, chopped napa cabbage, green onion, Boca italian soy sausage, (Hey, I was trying to use up whatever was left in the fridge!) wasabi fumi furikake, bonito flakes, shoyu, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, Japanese red pepper, etc... topped with 2 eggs scrambled and a squirt of ketchup, with some warm natto on the side. Somehow this dish always fails to live up to the deliciousness of the first few times I made it, mucking about with leftover ingedients Iron Chef-like in my parents' kitchen.

Lunch: Turnip, Chinese spinach and mushroom & something green (I forget what) steamed bao for lunch. A constant flow of calamansi drink all day long.

Was struck by the odd (for me anyway) urge for a Coke when checking out at Target at 9pm. I rarely buy anything off of an end cap, ever.

Dinner: Chicken and pineapple pizza (the Marco Landín especial) from Amazonas, the place across from Pusan Plaza, for dinner at 11:30pm. And another Coke. Surprised to find that it's actually a very nice little place, with coffee, teas, sandwiches, salads, etc... but totally lacking in the pretension and "snoot factor" I detest about so many other East Bay cafe-type places. Intimidatingly HUGE slices, too. Damn, why didn't I discover this one sooner? Curiously, even the liquor store next door appears clean and well lit... surprising considering the rest of that stretch of Telegraph Avenue seems rather dark and dingy, sometimes even in the middle of the day.

Should go back there again before I leave for Asia. Seeing as I've pretty much disassembled and packed up my kitchen at this point, that's probably quite likely to happen, too.

Lunch: 2 turnip strip bao for a late lunch / "eat something so you don't faint" snack.

Dinner: #20 at New Pagolac... seafood rice noodle soup with "squid, prawn, bonelesschickensliceofpork" and a soda chanh.

Other: 2 turnip bao, 1 Chinese spinach bao, 1 large Jack in the Box vanilla milkshake for midnight snack. Or whatever. Must start eating more normal meals again.