An Average Random Friday

"I hear that East and West Germany are now joined. Is that good news or bad news?" That was the rather unexpected question that my German friend M was asked on Friday morning.

About an hour earlier we had set out on the Tiger food trail. This is a day-long do-it-yourself tour of Singapore that takes you to some of the best hawker food stalls in the island. Each stop comes with a recommended dish or two which go down very nicely with Tiger beer.

We'd been off to a strong start at a stall called Epok Epok. They sold us some really good sardine pastry and absolutely outstanding kueh (a kind of Malay sweet). We were not bothered at all by the dirty looks we got from a couple of schoolgirls. They obviously disapproved of the idea of able-bodied men drinking beer at 11 am on a weekday. We obviously were loving the fact that we could.

No matter. We were on a mission. We were not to be deterred even by finding that the next stop, the delightfully named Skylab stall, was closed for lunch. (Yes, a food stall that was closed for lunch.) That meant we couldn't get any prawn vadai, so we had carrot cake instead. And Tiger beer.

That's when the stranger from the next table started chatting us up. After complaining about the high taxes on beer, he informed us that had paid his dues to Singapore by doing his manadatory 2-year stint in the army. Then, after being reassured that the reunification of Germany was good news, he turned to a topic closer to his heart.

"Is it true", he asked interestedly, "that there are some beaches in Germany where you can only go nude?"

He then told us that he intended to go to Germany for a holiday one day. I wonder why.

And so it went. Roast duck noodles and Tiger beer. Grilled tofu and cuttlefish and Tiger beer. Then, as the sun was setting, came the high point of the day: oyster omelette with the most wonderfully tangy tamarind-and-chilli dipping sauce. The oysters were fresh and juicy, the omelette was fried in generous amounts of oil, and the sauce was to die for.

It was so good that we decided we neded a break from all the eating. We took a couple of hours to recuperate at a wine bar. Then it was time to hit the final stop of the food trail. Good thing too, because by this time I was hungry again! So my supper of barbecued stingray went down very nicely indeed.

Satisfied by a good day's work feeding our baser appetites, we decided it was time we did something more intellectual. So we went to the National Museum where I remembered they were running an exhibition of Greek sculpture from the Louvre. Of course by this time the exhibition was closed for the day. But that was fine, since we really only wanted to go the museum bar anyway.

One drink and many photographs later it was clear that it was time to add a different flavour to the evening. So we made our final stop at Club Momo, a club that for some reason draws an almost entirely Chinese clientele and can usually be counted on to be interesting. I was not disappointed.

The entertainment for the night was a Thai band. Who sang only in Thai. And who did their stage banter entirely in Thai. In the middle they broke out into a sort of skit, for which one of the band members pretended to be pregnant. But I could not really tell what the skit was about because ... it was entirely in Thai.

I love this city!