Of fragrant harbours and homesickness

I recently went to Hong Kong for a short break and was taken on a whirlwind tour of the city (courtesy of some wonderfully hospitable friends). I have not been to Hong Kong since I was a child, so in a way, I was discovering the city for the first time. My local friends assure me that plenty has changed since I last visited and from what I can remember from my previous visits, they are entirely right. [Disclaimer: Given the brevity of my stay, all opinions expressed here are impressionistic.]

Hong Kong is great fun - good food, vibrant nightlife, fantastic shopping... (Pictures can be found here.) It also has a very dramatic skyline which looks particularly lovely at night. Where Singapore is planned right down to the very last street corner, Hong Kong sprawls out in a more haphazard fashion, no doubt a legacy of the Brits' laissez-faire approach to governance.

I was struck by the many buildings which housed trendy restaurants, bars or boutiques on the first floor, but looked utterly dilapidated from the second floor up. The streets are windy and - for a directionally challenged person such as I - quite confusing. However, their subway system - the MTR - is efficient and has great coverage. Also, I have to agree with my Dad when he says that it is easier to get to the airport via the MTR, as opposed to Singapore's MRT. You can even check in your luggage at the train station. Impressive stuff.

While Hong Kong is a place that I would recommend to anyone for a short holiday, I must confess that it is not somewhere that I would like to stay for any extended period of time. For one thing, my Cantonese is virtually non-existent. I also find the pace of life far too hectic. From chatting with some local friends, the impression that I got was that work is virtually all consuming. Everyone is in a constant struggle to get ahead, because no one - least of all the government - is going to help you. This breeds amazing entrepreneurial spirit on the one hand (out of sheer necessity almost), and an intensely individualistic society on the other. It is no surprise that there are far more wealthy businessmen in Hong Kong than in Singapore.

Food in Hong Kong - especially traditional Cantonese cooking - is sublime, but I still prefer the full variety of Southeast Asian flavours that we have in Singapore. As far as I can tell, Singapore is also more ethnically diverse, which makes for a more interesting city. I also like that the pace of life here is somewhat more laidback and the city more orderly. I also appreciate the fact that the government does try to give its citizens (especially those who are less advantaged) a helping hand wherever possible.

But my fundamental preference for Singapore over Hong Kong may just be a matter of habit and familiarity. After all, both cities have plenty to recommend themselves. At the end of the day, it may simply be a matter of preference. Singapore is not without its problems. While the government provides far more for its people, there is also the danger of Singaporeans becoming overly reliant on the government. Also, how does one plan to have "buzz" in a city?

There is no perfect city. I love coming home after a holiday, but after awhile I long to go away again. While I was abroad at university, I would come down with occasional bouts of homesickness. But now that I've graduated and come home, every now and then I find myself wishing that I could relive my university days. Sometimes it seems that we're constantly in transit. Sometimes it seems that we're just passing through. You never feel like you completely belong somewhere, or anywhere, really. In a way, we are all permanently homesick.

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

I've got my memories
Always inside of me
But I can't go back
Back to how it was

I believe now
I've come too far
No I can't go back
Back to how it was

Created for a place
I've never known

This is home
Now I'm finally
Where I belong
Where I belong
This is home
I've been searching
For a place of my own
Now I've found it
Maybe this is home
This is home

Belief over misery
I've seen the enemy
And I won't go back
Back to how it was

And I got my heart set
On what happens next
I got my eyes wide
It's not over yet
We are miracles
And we're not alone

And now after all my searching
After all my questions
I'm gonna call it home

I got a brand new mindset
I can finally see the sunset
I'm gonna call it home

Now I know
This is home

I've come too far
And I won't go back
This is home

Hong Kong

Of freedom and food

With the recent Singapore Day in New York (talkingcock.com's Top Excuses for NOT Protesting at 'Singapore Day' in New York is pretty funny) , seriouseats.com noted that "According to the late, great [New York Times food critic] Johnny Apple, Singapore has the best street food in the world."

In a September 2003 review, Apple writes:

"FOOD is the purest democracy we have," K. F. Seetoh [of Makansutra fame] said as we dug into breakfast bowls of bak kut teh, a peppery, restorative Teochew soup of pork ribs, mushrooms and kidneys. ''Singaporeans recognize no difference between bone china and melamine.''

Slurp, slurp. Yum, yum. The clear, aromatic broth, full of tender, close-grained pork, perked up by herbs and whole garlic cloves, was cooked in a hole in the wall next to a busy expressway and eaten at a sidewalk table. Cab drivers, teachers and a few junior executives slurped around us. Bak kut teh is the city's preferred hangover remedy, and Ng Ah Sio makes the best, which is why Mr. Seetoh took me there.

He continues:

I THINK the knock on Singapore is way overdone. Sure, it's squeaky clean and modern, but come on: does anyone actually prefer the beggars, rubbish and shantytowns that deface many large Asian cities? Not the poor souls who live in them. It's plenty tough on miscreants, but hardly deserving of William Gibson's woundingly dismissive tag line, "Disneyland With the Death Penalty."

Under Goh Chok Tong, Lee Kwan Yew's successor, individualism has gained a little more breathing room. The longstanding and much-ridiculed ban on chewing gum has just been relaxed. Censorship guidelines are currently under high-level review. Nightclubs, once invisible, now throb into the wee hours. And the louchest of Maugham's or Conrad's characters would feel right at home in the seedy bars and brothels off Geylang Road, east of the city center.

Singapore: A Repressed City-State? Not in Its Kitchens was the last article that was published in the New York Times while Apple was still alive. In it he writes:

With the country’s basic manufacturing jobs shifting to China, the younger Mr. Lee wants to turn the painfully strait-laced Singapore into a relaxed, appealing target for tourists. The primary lure will be a $3 billion resort and casino ...It will offer not only extensive facilities for gambling, an activity dear to Chinese hearts, but also, like Las Vegas, a wide array of top-end dining spots, in a nation where good eating is a national pastime.

But Singapore already has gastronomic attractions aplenty. Start with its unmatched street food — chili crabs and chicken rice, laksa and satay and fish head curry — served in hundreds of hawkers’ stalls. Fast, cheap and delicious, its hygiene is certified by the ever-vigilant Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

As a friend pointed out rather humorously - who needs freedom when you have food?

Happy Chinese New Year: A Certain Hope

We celebrated Chinese New Year with 4 consecutive days of (over)-eating, culminating in a big potluck party in our building where everyone demonstrated, most admirably, their culinary skills. Cherfy and I went on a big shopping spree in the depths of Chinatown (for truly, that's where all the good groceries can be found - not in the touristy bits) and we made char kway tiao and gulau melaka. More accurately, I followed Cherfy's competent instructions as best as I could (I am sous-chef, she is master chef, or, master Cherf - excuse the corniness, it's a festive-holiday affliction). Our dishes turned out great, and Cherfy also baked lots of scrumptious Chinese cookies. She is indeed culinary goddess.

Because three and a half years overseas turns almost everyone into culinary god/ goddess, we also had super yummy Indian curry, Hainanese chicken rice, fried bee hoon, dates wrapped in bacon, and nasi briyani. One of our friends also bought some excellent fried chicken wings. We even managed to buy a lo hei set from a Malaysian restaurant in Chinatown, and so we all happily tossed away.

We also had three steamboats going with all kinds of meat, seafood and vegetables. For desserts we had brownies, peppermint cake, our gulau melaka, and delicious cakes from Payard (fancy-pants Upper East Side bakery). We had about 20 people crowded onto our floor - it's a good thing that we live on the mezzanine because the little indoor balcony area just outside our kitchen afforded us with extra space. And because we had so much food, the very next day we had a leftover party. So really, we had prepared exactly double the amount of food that we needed. We all decided that it was a very good sign that we had started out the year with such abundance.

There was much merriment and festivity, but towards the end of the night it was also tinged with a distinct sense of regret and nostalgia. This was to be, for many of us, our last Chinese New Year overseas, our last year away from home. And in any leaving and returning, there is always a bittersweetness in letting go of one place and returning to another. In all the years of flying back and forth between the two sides of the earth this has become a familiar sensation, and yet this time around it is compounded because we are going back for good. Of course I am greatly looking forward to spending time with family and friends after such a long separation, but at the other side of the plane ride is not just another summer holiday, but really, the rest of our lives. We do not only leave New York, we leave behind the last of our carefree student existence.

Hello, real world.

But even though leaving always leaves me feeling a little heavy-hearted, I have a certain hope.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Jeremiah 29:11

Wishing everyone a very happy
and prosperous Chinese new year.