A Local Kind of Birthday

 

Today is Tom's 40-something birthday. It's not unusual for a dad to take his kids fishing to celebrate his birthday. Only here, we took our kids prawn fishing. What?! Prawn fishing?!

Yup, we went fishing for giant shrimp. 

 

Prawn fishing is a very local kind of thing to do here in Singapore. There are a few places in town to give it a whirl, but we decided to try East Coast Prawning after our morning swim. The place is made up of a few stocked, holding tanks under some tarps. We rented some bamboo poles and then loaded the tiny hooks with some kind of dark meat fish. Then we waited... and waited... and waited. I figured it'd be like shooting fish in a barrel and we'd walk out with a big ol' bag of shrimp within a half hour. Ha! Those prawns are smart!

Waiting is hard enough when you're celebrating your 40+ birthday, but it's made all the harder when you're 2 or 4. Maisie was pretty good about it, but eventually ran off to check the fish in the big tanks. Hudson had the patience of a gnat and ended up playing with my iPhone. The nice local man next to us tried to interest him by loading our hook with a worm he’d brought, but no amount of wiggling gave us the kind of luck he was having.

Tom, the birthday boy, actually landed one. Think of the highest pitched scream you've ever heard and you'll know Maisie's reaction. She was hysterical - in a good way. Her utter joy was cracking everybody up. Mind you, we were the only non-locals there. Hudson was super curious, too, and even tried to grab the thing. That wasn't a good idea since the prawn had pinchers! Tom has to be careful getting it off the hook, but my brave man did it. Getting it into the holding bag was a whole different story. The darn thing slipped right out of his hands. Of course, what were we going to do with it anyway? If we had a whole slew of them, we could have had them cooked for us, but one? Between four of us? Yes, it was a big shrimp, but hey - it's still a shrimp.

After it became apparent that our grand total catch would be one shrimp, we packed it up and went to rent a family bike, the goofiest adventure ever.  I felt like I was in a scene from "The Music Man" or something. The kids sat up front. Tom and I both pedaled, but only Tom could steer which, of course, made me batty.

We tooled up and down the boardwalk in our bicycle built for four looking at all the giant ships just off the coast. Hundreds of people were camping and cooking on the giant BBQ pits. Some folks braved the water and sand, but somehow with HUNDREDS of freighters just off the coast, that wasn't appealing to me. Amazingly, the day wasn't as hot as usual, but I still had to take a shower when we got back. Sometimes I measure the day by the number of showers I take.

We had a very local "cake" as well. I don't have a cake pan and cakes are very expensive here. Plus, the pre-made cakes are in flavors are things like Green Tea. So instead, I stacked up a bunch of mooncakes. Today is the last day of the Mooncake Festival so mooncakes are on sale. I bought some banana, passion fruit and chocolate ones from Raffles Hotel, the big famous hotel here. Yum! These were definitely better than the traditional ones we've had before. The snow skin is actually a sponge-cake like consistency and the filling is almost a pudding. The chocolate center is a hard, chocolate ball. Yum! Speaking of mooncakes, we could have gone to the end of the Festival and done the lantern march with the kids, but I’m Chinatown-ed out.

We had a very local kind of night anyway finally getting to spend some time with Typhaine and Fred. They’re the folks from whom we’re subletting. They’ve been traveling the entire time we’ve been here (nice life!) and we’ve only met Typhaine once before we came at my father’s-in-law farm. Her mother is the best friend of Tom’s stepmother.

We know all about them through our families and Cheryl. We’ve been watching their TV, eating off their dishes and sleeping on their sheets. She’s been reading my blog so we know each other,  but we don’t really know each other - so spending time together tonight was lovely. Cheryl babysat their 10-month-old Emeline and Cheryl’s best friend Jinky stayed here. Hudson loves Jinky, constantly asking, “Where’s Jinky?”

 

They took us to maybe the most local place of all: Westlake. This Chinese restaurant is located in HDC housing which is government funded, low-income housing. I’m guessing it’s a big like NY’s LeFrak City. The buildings are massive complexes and some of them are almost a city unto themselves. They have restaurants, grocery stores, cleaners and the like. I’m not quite sure where this one was since Fred drove (nice!), but somewhere off Holland.

Pork buns are their speciality and holy cow - are they good! We had a lot of other food that Fred ordered with much expertise. I’m not really sure what we ate - some kind of green beans with minced meat, chicken with chills, soft tofu - the list goes on and on. We were stuffed!

Of course, we weren’t too stuffed to have an after dinner drink so we headed to Dempsey Hill which is really packed on a Saturday night. We tried a placed called the Tippling Club.

The bar looked pretty nondescript, but the drinks were anything but. Tom’s was served in a tin can. Fred’s glass was covered in sugar - gorgeous. Typhaine’s glass looked like something from the 20s. Mine? I had the absolute best drink, hands down. It was served in a box, kind of like a perfume box. The drink was in a perfume bottle, too! What fun! I felt like I was knocking back some sort of prohibition concoction.The dessert was designed to match Tom’s drink. It was some kind of coconut, tapioca thing. I liked it, but didn’t love it. That place was definitely a cool spot to celebrate. Of course, four drinks and a dessert cost - are you read for this - S$150! And you thought NY was expensive!

Too bad Fred and Typhaine have been gone for so much of our stay. I really like hanging out with them and think we could be fast friends. The neat thing is they are planning to go home at Christmas - with Cheryl in tow! What a kick it’d be to see Cheryl there, playing in the real snow! Tee hee!