A tour de Boston (or: How I was reminded that I will probably always love that dirty water)

Anyone living in the northeast who didn't spend the day in bed with a vicious post-boxing day party hangover probably noticed the odd, warmer-than-it-usually-is-in-May weather today (Sunday). After watching the Pats win their final regular season game against the Bills (only to NOT make the playoffs. Thanks, Brett, man, you're a hell of a gunslinger), I decided to make use of the unseasonable warmth and take the bike out around town. What started as a little trip to the Seaport district quickly escalated into a 1.5 hour spin around the whole city. For those with a cartographic penchant.

Some observations from my ride...

• The city was remarkably empty. Yeah, its winter break for all the colleges, and people are still probably away on vacation and such, but still.
• Exactly one week ago a storm that seemingly lasted for three straight days had just dumped over a foot on the city. Today there was almost no trace of that snow, save random piles around parking lots. It is a testament to the completely unpredictable weather 'round these parts.
• Upon further review, the Fenway neighborhood is surprisingly charming. Yeah, Yeah, I know, its clogged up with Northeastern students and other college-aged detritus and probably is an epic disaster after Sox games.
• I took Commonwealth from Kenmore all the way to the Public Gardens, and from Mass. I caught EVERY green light. That's right baby, Hereford to Berkeley, ALL GREEN.
• Speaking of that run down Comm, the christmas lights are still up in the trees that dot the park that runs along the street. It was very pleasent to look over, through the last gasps of dusk, and gaze into that sea of lights as I careened down the street.
• Part of a roof on another Emerson building, over on the corner of Boylston and Tremont appears to have fallen into the road! A crane was there lifting the offending concrete block off the road and they had traffic down to one lane. Damn, Emerson's falling apart, literally!
• Its a great little view off from one of the industrial piers in the Seaport District across the little channel to Southie.
• Sadly, the Harpoon Brewery is closed on Sundays.

Also, while on the subject, Brett Farve needs to retire, like, now.

I hate this country...

Americans look to Jesus for diet

I hate pink hats.

Yeah, been back from Singapore over a month. I guess I'm fully "over it" by now, or maybe I just haven't had much to say.

Anyone remotely affliated with say, reality, probably can grasp that the Red Sox have been wildly successful lately. Two Championships in four years is pretty amazing, and before this rant starts, a brief disclaimer. I'm not hating on winning, not at all. Saying that we "lost our identity" as a suffering, tortured fan base after 2004 is stupid. The great value of 2004, as Bill Simmons pointed out, was that we all became regular baseball fans again. Winning is awesome, its also not TERRIBLY surprising when you have the second highest payroll in baseball.

The problem is the low creeking sound you hear as people mercilessly jump on the Sox bandwagon. These pink hat wearing fans are a the embodiment of fickle fandom. These are people who go to Red Sox games to be seen, just another social function in a busy summer weekend. These people are the reason one rots in a virtual waiting room for two straight days unable to purchase any tickets for the upcoming season. Yeah, its always been hard to get Sox tickets. Now its just about impossible.

This is what we're reduced to: crowds comprised of mainly pink hat'ers, refusing to make noise during the cold late innings of the 2007 playoffs. Why should they get riled up in the face of sub-zero temperatures? Fenway isn't sacred ground to these people; its just another gathering, a chance to get loaded and be seen by one's equally vacuous friends, possibly while text messaging. These people don't follow every pitch, they don't debate the relative merits of Coco v. Jacoby or Doug Mirabelli v. a bag of balls.

Do I want a losing season anytime soon? No, that's ridiculous, no fan wants that. But should a prolonged period of losing come, I'll take solace in knowing that there'll be a few less pink hat wearing douchebags out there.

Orchard Road (or: why Singapore is as West as the East gets)

As you can see, Orchard Road has more 'Miracle on 34th St.' mojo than 10 Newbury Streets. Things like Orchard Road remind me that even though I'm half a world away, the commercialization of Christmas (happy birthday jesus!) is going strong. Singapore, its where West meets East. Everything strange, eastern sounding description I may have written should be taken with an Orchard-esque grain of salt. Because for every hawker center slinging sock coffees, there's a Gucci retail outlet on Orchard rd. My favorite thing about Orchard decorations: the ubiquitous warning signs they plaster all over the christmas decorations. High voltage my ass, they're CHRISTMAS LIGHTS. Welcome to Singapore.

The Problem with Coffee

I really love coffee. I'm not even really a coffee snob, per say. I'll happily swill Dunks regular (that's reg-u-lah) all day long. I have no real qualms about Starbucks. I own a french press. So you could imagine my dismay when I started to piece together the sad state of coffee affairs in Singapore.

There are really three options: instant coffee, hawker center/food court sock coffee, and real coffee. I should also point out that real coffee is only available from international chains (D and D is NOT one of them, sadly) like Starbucks, Coffee Bean, and Spinelli's. Sadly, it is very expensive, on the order of S$ 4 a cup. For reasons that I will never fully grasp, instant coffee is very popular here. I guess it was also very popular in the states a long time ago, and probably still is in jesusland. But yeah, I get it, its very convenient, etc. That said, instant coffee is pure swill and my disdain for it has magnified exponentially in Singapore. There I said it.

That only leaves the sock coffee (Kopi properly, another Malaysian concept hijacked by the Singaporeans). I don't even know how to properly describe it. They have these metal pitchers that have a long, sock-like object resembling a woman's stocking that acts as a filter. They start with a mug and about a centimeter of sweetened condensed milk, then add the coffee from the sock-pitcher. This coffee is a black, viscous sludge. (Yes, its sludge, I thought it would make a nice change from coffee {The Birdcage}.) Lastly, some hot water is added to dilute the coffee.

First problem. The condensed milk is SO sweet. I had cut sugar out of my coffee about 5 years ago, and I haven't looked back since. Sadly, the milk has so much sugar in it, that you can't really escape it. Second problem. The coffee layer and the milk layer mix very poorly, in fact today, when I got to the end of my cup I noticed a whole lot of remaining condensed milk, which is pretty gross. Third, and most important, this is simply not coffee.

I think the problem is that the Singaporean pallet is not a fan of bitter tastes. Everything here that is supposed to be sweet is very sweet. Bitter, acidic brews, won't cut it, no matter how many subtle flavor notes they contain.

Chicken Rice

The lack of blog updates lately is not attributed to inactivity. No, we've gone around, seen things, and have done some things, but really I've lost the will to comment. There was very little to say at that time, but now, with less than 7 full days remaining in Singapore, I'm getting to the point where I cannot help but to reflect on everything. The difficulty is that I have not solidified any opinions, which, if you've read this jumbled assortment of half-developed thoughts before, is not a problem I usually face.

Today was a return to form, of sorts. A classmate and I got some lunch from a Hawker center. Hawker centers, if you're unaware, are these open air eateries full of different stalls all serving their own unique food. In the case of the one near to our apartment, it has probably close to 50 different food options, then the drink stalls, because you get your drink at a separate place (obviously). We ordered Chicken Rice, which is something of a speciality here. Obviously, like all things here, it has its origin someplace else (China) but is still quintessential Singapore. You get a platter of white meat chicken sliced up, skin intact, with a soy sauce based sauce underneath and a modest appointment of cucumbers and tomatoes. Along with the chicken, is a plate of rice that was cooked in chicken stock. On the side comes a two-sided container of dipping sauces, one red, hot and spicy and the other brown and sweet.

I paired the Chicken Rice with fresh Soursop juice, another uniquely Singaporean proposition. You'd be hard-pressed to think up another place where incredibly fresh tropical fruit juice teams up with authentic chinese food so well. Soursop is very delicious; it essentially tastes like a naturally occurring pina colada mix, a melange of pineapple and coconut flavors perfectly melded together. Why no one here has thought to add rum to soursop juice is both completely beyond me and the subject for another focused rant on the qausi-puritanical cultural norms one sometimes encounters here.

Chicken rice with soursop juice, enjoyed in open-air style in a hawker center, is the first tangible thing that I think I will miss about Singapore. It's so wonderfully satisfying, and in a lot of ways, unlike most things, is uniquely Singapore.

Tonight I go to Zoukout. Zoukout is the biggest partying event for people under 30 in Singapore. It takes place on another island, Sentosa, the local resort destination (think Cooney Island in the 1930's). The tickets are S$ 50, and the event goes from 8 pm to 8 am with thousands of people attending. Details of THAT experience to follow...

Sunday afternoon at the Jurong Bird Park (Its like a zoo, but with only birds)