Fish is the new pig

A few days ago we have tried one of the signature dishes of Singapore, fish head curry.

The cheek flesh, supposed to be the best part, is indeed very tender and delicate in taste. If I did not see it coming from the fish head, I would have thought it was just fish…

The eye ball are supposed to be a delicatessen too. They are given to the kids, as it’s good for developing good eye sight.

Marco and I are not very clever, we consider ourselves funny, but maybe we are just stupid. We tried the eye balls.

Marco went first, I was horrified and disgusted, I called him a monster for eating eyes! The only edible eyes to me were/are the Haribo ones for Halloween.

But then I couldn’t let him win, I had to do it too.

So, I did it.

The day after I didn't feel quite right. It wasn't the eye ball obviously, it was tiny and without any taste. It was knowing what I have done.

Instead of feeling brave after matching my husband in a performance recorded by many people, I felt disturbed. I felt violated by my own actions. Went quiet. Couldn’t stop thinking about it and while I was brushing my teeth, my stomach was turned inside out by some strong gags.

Managed to keep it in. But even after a few days, I am still thinking about it. The spoon full of rice and spicy vegetables I had straight after the eye didn’t help much. The beer did not console my mind. Only the chocolate and Amaro at home made me feel safe.

It was horrible.

Good thing is that nothing of a fish gets wasted here; Singaporeans eat not only the body and the head, but even the bladder. Fish is the new pig.

And we have crossed a line. Despite of what I said on FB, I am not sure I am ready to push myself any further. I just don’t have the stamina for it. 

Our first trip back

My first trip back to Europe has been booked, YAY!

By the time we go it will have been 8 months in Asia, I think it’s a long enough time to go back. I have been reading about how long it’s desirable to wait for expats before visiting home… and I have decided in my case it’s different, as I won’t be visiting Oxford, but my previous home and what feels like home.
It took us about 10 minutes to book tickets, while Marco was buying BA long hauls I was buying Ryanair to and from the south of Italy, like in the good old days.
Simple.

Except for the fact it took me a good 3 weeks to understand that not so subtle feeling of sadness, annoyance and depression was most probably due to the fact I needed to see loved ones.
So, understanding and acceptance it was time to plan a trip was the first step.
I resisted it, as the idea of a trip in an exotic place was appealing, and I felt pressure to travel rather than going back to Italy. Fuck it; I don’t care if I’m a loser.
Then discussion with the xiansheng on what to do, how and where to go.
Next step was the one I hate the most, checking flights. It gives me a level of anxiety I struggle to describe. I hate it from the bottom of my heart. And yet I did it for at least 3 weeks no stop.
I feel sick at the pressure given by price fluctuation, at the feeling of regret for not being more organised. It resulted in me buying cigarettes instead of flights, and evenings spent with an unsettling heavy weight on my chest (il cosiddétto OVO SODO).
Truth is I am all but a planning, organised, logical human being. My actions are driven by feelings, sentiment, and stomach.
Not always good feelings, sense of guilt plays a major role in my life. That urge of making everyone happy to the point I no longer know what makes me happy.
It has been hard but a cold and white (hopefully literally) Christmas is on the horizon, chats on our life in Asia in front of an open fire are only over a month away, singing and dancing with the girls will make all this struggle worth it. And my heart is already melting at the prospect of spending time with the cutest Italian-English-Norwegian speaking spiderman I have ever seen.
I am now hopeful for a peaceful pre-holiday and pre-crazy-travel time.

r.

Familiarity and contempt. And snot-man...

Everything seems so much more familiar now. A taxi to work during a tropical thunderstorm; cheap food from a hawker centre; dinner al fresco in 30 degree weather (in November!)!; living in a condominium complex with a swimming pool; flip-flop wearing iPhone zombies everywhere.....

But every now and again we are reminded that we are truly living in a different world. It's a world that doesn't conform to my British values in body space and bodily fluids.

So on the bus to work you may get the occasional cough in your direction. Ok, it's not pleasant but more driven by the aircon than illness. I can live with it. The people that stand close to me, in a position such that my hand, holding the plastic hand rail above, is gently brushed and caressed by their hair, I could do without. It's a level of intimacy that I'm not looking for and don't really enjoy. As the buses lurch forward or stop suddenly the hand rail moves, I move, and occasionally they get a tap on the head from the plastic hand-piece. It may take a few goes, but that normally shifts them; but why....why stand there in the first place? Do they need closeness from strangers in the morning? Why invade my body space?? I don't get it. I just don't get it... does my reaction surprise you? Is it an over-reaction from where you are sitting? Maybe it is, maybe it's the culmination of all the little things that are also familiar, but that are deep within me reacting together, fermenting, as my reserved Britishness is faced with an onslaught of non-British standards and norms.

The taxi driver eating food, spitting pieces he doesn't like into a bag; the middle aged woman belching loudly and openly in the bank queue in the morning; the receptionist clipping her toe nails while talking to me; the old man on the bus pulling bits of skin off his feet on the journey home in the evening. Each of these amazed me in their own way; maybe they change you, they build together a wall of expectation until when you see something else that would on the first day here have made you recoil in horror then it's not so bad, just another familiar-yet-not-familiar part of living in another world, another culture. And then you crack and in a mad Brexit-like over-reaction you imagine a line has been crossed, enough is enough, you must take back control! Why do people not watch where they are going? Is it so fucking hard to stand up and move out of the way to let someone get off the bus without having to climb over you? Why do strangers brush their hair repeatedly on my hand!! ENOUGH!!!!

Last night was a night that reminded us that we are not there yet; we maintain the ability to distinguish according to our European norms. As we sat at the bus stop waiting for the number 75 to take us home after a lovely pizza, aperol spritz, wine, salumi and cheeses, an evening with Italians and expats, we found ourselves with a very small and skinny gentleman, clearly the worse for wear. Perhaps a taxi home would have been quicker, but the weather was good, the bus option would take 15 minutes, it was fine. The man took a seat near us, and started to blow his nose. One nostril at a time. Onto the floor. Roberta left at nostril number one; I wasn't sure if she was starting to walk home, given how quickly she moved some distance away. She told me later she was about to throw up, and needed space from seeing what he was doing (he had also started wiping some errant snot on the seat as he clearly wasn't having great success in bypassing his hand completely, and didn't have any tissues). So she missed the nasal and pleural phlegm excavation that followed. We concluded our journey variously laughing and feeling nauseous at what had just happened.

So there you have it - we are still British, Italian, European. Familiarity doesn't yet mean acceptance. We can let out the anguish at things that are not as we would do, behave, and so vent our feelings, postpone our own Brexit moment. It would be nice if we had more people with whom we could discuss our daily observations; we have accumulated many great topics for those lunchtime chats in the MH canteen. Also might be a sign that bus travel is not for us, and we need a car. Our own personal travel space. Something to look into...