“Venus in Fur” on the West End: It’s Sexual and Violent (Like Game of Thrones!)by Randi / October 26, 2017
Chinqui! After the nonstop action of our previous few weeks in Kyrgyzstan, a few days in Almaty provided the easy, relaxing tourism we needed for recovery and rejuvenation. I know what you’re thinking because it’s what I thought too: “No way you’re talking about Kazakhstan being the easygoing part of this trip.” I know! Mah wife! Against our (unfounded) expectations, Almaty was nice and perfectly boring. For the first time in a long time, it felt just like your average cosmopolitan city, with nice cafes, restaurants, buildings, and even recognizable brands. It was clean and modern and was the first place to remind us of London since Shanghai. Yep, Kazakhstan is just like London.
We breathed a sigh of relief (but not too deeply; the car exhaust/pollution problems in this region are big in this city) at getting a leisurely day to sightsee at our own pace. We decided to follow a walking tour around the city from the website Caravanistan, which was very helpful but took us literally six hours to get through. Granted we did stop a lot (at every single good looking grocery store; more on that later), but still, damn, what a town! We started at Republic Square, which was about 40 minutes from our hostel when you factor in how incorrect all my advance food-findings were (HappyCow is only as good as we make it, people!). At Republic Square we found the very very tall Independence Monument, which features a pretty f-ing badass man riding a flying snow leopard. HELL YEAH you fly that magical snow leopard into the SKY, Golden Man!
Great success!
Look at that stupid kid statue in front of you riding a regular old horse! HAHA LAME CHILD.
The Independence Monument stands in a big official looking square, with government buildings and the former Presidential Palace. Also nearby is the monument to the 1986 December Uprising, which is said to have been mostly students protesting decisions of Gorbachev. But there’s so much misinformation, as with everything out of the Soviet Union, that no one can agree on whether it was a protest for independence or just against his latest decision, whether it was planned or spontaneous, whether 200 people participated in the uprising or 40,000 (get your shit together USSR), or whether only a handful of people died or whether the death toll exceeded 1,000. FFS the Soviet Union really didn’t like facts. The statue below, honoring the uprising, is called Dawn of Liberty, because a few years after the uprising, Kazakhstan won its independence from the Soviets – even though they didn’t seem to want it. Apparently in 1991, 94% of voters voted to stay in the Soviet system? but then just months later they were granted their independence? What the crap was going on over there! Kazakhstan was the last country to gain their independence from the Sovs whether they wanted it or not.
Gypsy! Give me your tears!
We turned to walk down Dostyk avenue, which previously was called Lenin avenue. Still in the land of Lenin avenues and statues! Never leaving! There we saw the Arman Cinema with this amazing relief on the outside, facing the street. And yes, it’s connected to a Burger King. I know, it’s confusing to hate the sight of gross fast fooderies while also being excited to be in a place with names you know.
this suit is NOT black
In this area we found the statue of Tulebaev, a composer. Now that we’re outside of Republic Square and its municipal buildings and its concrete, you’ll notice how so much of Almaty is green and tree-lined. It feels like the whole city center is a park sometimes! There are bike paths and foot paths, so many fountains, and so many trees. A-nice!
Wave good bye to your clock radio, asshole!
I really liked the below monument to Zhambyl Zhabayev, the Kazakh folksinger. He played the dombura, which is not a Japanese food, and only sang in the Kazakh language. He lived to be just a week shy of 100 years old, which is pretty amazing for anyone but especially for someone born next to a river by Mount Zhambyl (which he was named after) while his mother was fleeing an attack on her village. I don’t think anyone seeing a baby born at the most inconvenient time in the most inconvenient place in the middle of such horror and tragedy stopped and said hey I bet that baby lives to be 100, or past 4. The internet has no reports of fun nicknames but dammit if he was never called Zhambalaya I will be so mad.
I had not come to Hollywood to fight with a man dressed as Hitler.
I was also a fan of the statue to Taras Shevchenko, the Ukrainian artist and writer. I like that his name is in the plural. I write many Taras! I like that he was Ukrainian and I found nothing relating him to Kazakhstan anywhere on the internet. But most of all I like that his statue is so f-ing weird. Why did they just make his face come out of an amorphous blob? Is it because he isn’t Kazakh? They being prankers?
I like!
Okay I’m mostly joking about the statues though. My real top sight in Almaty is, I think, the actual top sight in Almaty – the fountain based on the Chinese zodiac but bastardized by Soviet symbolism so it became just a wet circle of confusion.
King in the Castle, King in the Castle
It’s a great fountain, but at first glance you might just think the animal statues are of your standard choices. Especially if you know it’s supposed to represent the zodiac, you might recognize that oh there’s the lion, there’s a ram, there’s the…snail? Instead of cool things like dragons, the use of Soviet symbolism means we get things like the snail.
mah wife
The symbols used are thus kind of funny, kind of cute, and it makes the fountain even more interesting to know why there are such random animals featured.
Very nice, very nice! How much?
An important artwork for us to find was this mural (above) on the wall of a hotel (or office building) that was under significant construction. I hope they don’t hurt the murals! We wanted to find this painting because it represents us on our Silk Road journey! Okay maybe they were thinking more ‘actual explorers and adventurers from thousands of years ago’ and not two little whiteys but hey we felt pretty cool seeing it.
Everybody know it for girls!
We next moved into the war portion of our monument viewing. Above is the monument to two female heroes of World War II, Manshuk Mametova and Aliya Moldagulova. Manshuk was a machine gunner and the first Soviet Asian woman to receive the Hero of Soviet Union medal for bravery. She had been studying at the Almaty Medical Institute when the war began, and schools in various cities are named after her. Aliya was also awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal, for her work during the war as a sniper. Apparently she trained at an all female sniping school, which sounds incredibly badass. Does the US have anything like that or do they still not like having girlies in the military?
Below is requisite Eternal Flame, which we saw in every single place in the former Soviet Union. After that is the Glory Monument in Panfilov Park. It is dedicated to the 28 guardsmen of Panfilov. The 28 were a group of Red Army soldiers who fought in the defense of Moscow in 1941, and they all died in action. Most of them were recruits from the Kazakh and Kyrgyz regions.
sleeve of wizard
Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium
On one main boulevard was the lovely opera house, which was also under construction and it took several visits to get a picture without a truck on its front stoop. A poster on the facade informed us that the opening performance of the season was occurring the night we left. Cool guys.
all other countries have inferior potassium
Thought we saw literally all the sights, we mostly enjoyed strolling amid all the greenery and taking pictures of buildings we liked even if we had no idea what they were. I’m guessing the below is a government building though. I know you’re impressed by my deductive skills.
Although Kazakhstan a glorious country, it have a problem, too: economic, social, and Jew.
We spent more than a few hours in the A. Kasteyev State Museum of Arts, a really interesting and neverending mix of good art, bad art, weird art, blue art. I recall that it was a maze that I couldn’t get out of fast enough to find a bathroom (horrible set up!). I also recall that there was a scary weird robot sculpture out front, and a CREEPY AF painting of Baby Trump inside.
this is the future nobody wants
IMPEACH! IMPEACH THIS BABY!
Next up is this church, the Ascension Cathedral, I am pretty sure, and look! It’s also under construction! It’s made of wood (anyone else just hear Uncle Joey’s puppet?) and claims to be the second tallest wooden building in the world but it lies. It’s a wooden building of lies. Just kidding buildings can’t tell truths or lies. They don’t speak! But I bet this was the second tallest at one time but other things kept happening and this one stopped growing.
The church was built in the 19th century when the region was called Turkestan which is the cutest lil word. It’s had other serious reconstruction works throughout past 50 years so I guess wood doesn’t hold up so good.
You know what also doesn’t hold up to the test of time? Random things named after deceased royals.
It’s weird, guys. As is this:
Not really sure what’s going on with this building but the people behind it REALLY don’t know what ‘disco’ music is because it sure as hell ain’t Vanilla Ice or Shaggy. No idea what this building actually was because we didn’t dare return at night but man I’m still really curious. What designer got away with this?
Shall we move on to food? That’s always my favorite part! The agenda item I was most eager for was the Green Market (or Zelenyi Bazar), the big produce market where locals buy their goods and where tourists like me can find Kazakhstan’s famous apples. Yep, I didn’t know before this trip, but Kazakhstan is famous for apples! We bought lots of their most precious varieties and had apples for daaays. Spoiler: They don’t hold a candle to my fave, the Fuji apple, which I can’t find ANYWHERE anymore. Kazakh varieties (varietals? when do you use varietals without sounding like a dick) are a little grainier than I’m used to, and a little sour, making my eyes go phrmmmph.
I will look upon your treasures, gypsy!
We bought apples and pears and plums and oranges and more apples. So fun. Pro tip: Oranges outside the UK are super expensive. I remember in China I bought an orange once (a mandarin one!) and it was like 4x as much as the rest of the grocery haul. Ridic!
LIke all the amazing markets we discovered on our travels, the Green Market had so many wonderful looking goods that we just couldn’t buy and carry for weeks longer in our packs, like these spices. The vendors are always like ‘hey girl over here buy my goods!’ and I try to say ‘I’m so sorry I would love to they look amazing but I’m backpacking rn and I don’t have the room or the ability to keep them from exploding everywhere and also customs??’ but just with an apologetic look.
Across from the Green Market was the Rakhat chocolate factory, which I was suuuper excited about, but which was a big letdown. It was mainly a little shop overflowing with people pointing to bins of candy in bulk and saying how many grams they wanted. And there was no list of ingredients visible for any of the candies, all hidden behind glass. I asked a clerk about one and she said there was no milk but like how could I believe you if you aren’t checking the ingredients yourself, clerk?! And I’d have to ask about each one? Blergh. I would happily read endless lists of Russian ingredients but I don’t want to make a clerk in an overflowingly busy little shop do that for me. I found my goodies elsewhere. ALSO, all the guides I read beforehand said that this factory made the whole neighborhood smell like chocolate so I was beyond pumped for that but it didn’t even smell like chocolate in the shoppe! J’ACCUSE!
Okay so the ‘I have no room’ excuse might not be entirely accurate regarding the spices…they can be simply little packets, after all. And I definitely made room for less practical goodies I found at my favorite posh grocery store in Almaty, called Interfood. Oh MAN did we score some amazing accidentally vegan totally unnecessary treats.
DA RISO ITALIANOOO! Ok i think i’m out of Borat quotes
The Ritter Sport Marzipan is RG, and you can find it all over the world. I don’t think I like marzipan in other forms (probably because of Gilmore Girls) but it’s great in this. But the real exciting part of this crop of goodies is that box of Speculoos Creme cookies! oh MAN I picked up that box as yet another futile exercise in self-punishment, expecting it to be laden with milk products, but it was accidentally vegan! I wish I bought more of those but I could barely fit one box crushed in my pack. The Rakhat chocolate bar was decent and satisfied my chocolate craving. The other one (the gold) is a gift for someone, haven’t decided yet! Who wants it?
Manner are my favorite treats in the world so I was excited to find some milk-free wafer cookies of similar ilk. These weren’t very good (kind of tangy) but still, wafer cookies on any day are better than non wafers or something like that.
hehe they’re called Sultan waffles
But the best find in Interfood was this bag o’ Cat Tongues! Omg little cinnamon discs of pure magic. I would LOVE to find these again!
We found some great food in Almaty, although nothing matched our amazing Georgian dinner on our first night. My favorite was the little falafel joint a few minutes from our hostel, called Falafel Forever. It was GREAT! And so cheap! I love falafel platters. It’s my perfect set up – hummus, pita, falafel, and tons of fun roasted veggies and salads.
Across the opera house ( I think) was a Brooklyn-style burger place that Husband needed to go in, and luckily they had a really good cabbage slaw that I enjoyed. Of course I also had some of the great potato wedges and a fresh grapefruit soda.
For dinner one night, we decided to tourist it up and have our first Italian food in months instead of having more Soviet-era potato and cabbage dishes. We went into a trattoria called Del Papa right on the main square of a main boulevard (I wanna say near the opera house again) and got the best familiar dishes, including vegetable soup, a great panzanella salad, and a roasted veggie dish in amazing sauce.
Yum! So many good meals, so many apples, so many statues and stories! And SO much junk food in my bags! Shall we cap off our nice stay in Almaty with a shot of the sign hanging in the shared bathroom at Sky Hostel? Ok!
This is why I’m done with hostels.
Okay bye Almaty! Great success!
This is my country of Kazakhstan. It locate between Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and assholes Uzbekistan.
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Singapore Some Sugar on Me because I LOVE IT HERE
Recently* we took a gigantic trip to Australia, which is hella far away, and we faced the exciting decision of where to plan the layover between all the super long flights. To help with the expected debilitating jet-lag that comes with flying around the world all the way to the far end, we planned to spend a few days in our layover destination, so we wanted somewhere new and exciting (sorry Qatar) and somewhere we could easily enjoy with only 2-3 days without wanting to bag Aussieland and stay there forever (sorry Bangkok (we wuv u)). Out of all the options, Singapore easily won. All the interesting history, all the super rich people, all that amazing food, all that CLEANLINESS? Easiest decision ever! We were ready to be:
Singapore is a unique lil babe, known for its strict rules, diverse population, and incredible food. It can seem a little daunting if you only know it for headlines like “CHILD EXECUTED FOR SPITTING”, but as a tourist, it seems pretty nice. Yes the government needs to CHILL on a lot of things, and it’s not exactly a prime example of democracy, but that’s an issue for a different conversation (also I wanna go back so shhh). Its populace is a mix of mainly Chinese, Malay, and Indians, plus expats and workers from all over the world, making it culturally and gastronomically fascinating. Because of this diverse population, there are four official languages: Malaysian, Mandarin Chinese (which I took an intro class in last week and the Chinese professor said I had a knack for it and thought maybe I studied it before which readers and I surely find HILARIOUS considering my history with trying to speak in China), Tamil, and English.
Obviously we are happy for that last one given our mmm not so successful history with the Chinese yazik, but it’s the result of colonialism. Singapore was founded in 1819 as a British trading post by Sir Stamford Raffles. Then this poor lil bab was treated like a ping pong ball once the British East India Company collapsed: it was ceded to the British Raj (the British rule in India) and then occupied by Japan and then became part of Malaysia and then said peace to Malaysia and only became sovereign in 1965! I bet you have jeans you haven’t washed for longer than Singapore has been independent and that’s gross. Despite its age, Singapore has become a global economic leader (and a tax haven), as well as a leader in education, technology, innovation, safety, lack of gum, and throwing lavish parties for super rich people and hiring synchronized swimming teams to perform in rooftop pools even though literally no one is watching.
But first, let’s get there. To get over as much of the jet-lag as we could before continuing onto Oz (does anyone actually call it that, is this okay), we planned a solid three days in Singapore, which is both the country name and the city name, it’s a lil baby city-state, like rull small but it makes up for its size in per capita wealth (gross) and amazing food (amazing). Our flights from London took us through Dubai, which has the WORST airport for a fast transfer because you cannot find water or regular snacks, like sure there are luxury cars and jewelry for sale but what normal traveler actually needs that when you are going from one long flight to another in less than an hour? More like Du BYE BOY. Also, I find it super hilarious that the flight to Dubai is about 7 hours and then the flight to Singapore is another 7 hours! Shit’s far!
At first, I thought the coolest thing about this itinerary was that we’d have to fly Emirates, which I’d never flown but always wanted to because Bryan Safi always raved about how fancy it was on the “Throwing Shade” podcast and I guess because of JAniston’s commercials for them (though they always made me a little mad, like why is she doing airplane commercials (and ads for Aveeno and water?) after making a million $ per episode?? did she blow all her dough on pilates (it IS expensive but dayum Jen)). Suffice it to say, nothing has ever been as disappointing as Emirates was. Okay maybe not nothing but everything about it was a letdown except the bathrooms, which were normal. The service (atrosh), the comfort, the everything, all totally meh or worse. Yes we were in the economy trough and I am sure the first class extravagance is what makes it famous, but for regular people, Emirates is some overblown b.s.
When we finally got to Singapore, the smallest, coolest dot at the tip of Malaysia, the airport was so adorable it almost cured all my travel woes. Like most of Singapore, the airport was decked out for the Chinese New Year – and it was going to be the Year of the Dog. Can you imagine how happy I was after so much plane time to see these giant babies upon landing?
Because we are Serious Travelers, we took the time in our exhausted stupor to figure out the metro system to get into the city. It was frustrating – we had to go up and down many flights of stairs to get to the right ticket booth (it was early, things were closed) and then back up and down to go to the platform, but we did it. It was fine. People were looking at us, but we’re used to that. It was about a 15 minute walk from the metro station to our hotel, and once we came up from underground in the city we were greeted with some real heat. Coming from London in winter, the Singapore heat was perfection (almost making up for the inability to bring into the country what Chandler and I also consider perfection: gum (though of course I snuck a few pieces into my toiletries because I like to live dangerously) (but truth is officials don’t care as long as it’s a small amount for personal use)). We stayed at the Park Regis Hotel because it was nice, had a pool, and we could pay entirely with otherwise-worthless-for-Londoners Avios points. Unfortunately, we arrived at 9am and the room wasn’t ready until 3pm (!!), but we had access to the pool and the pool showers (and the wifi while we planned our day). Not a bad deal. It was a small pool, and it was so early that it was kind of chilly and windy by the water (and in the shade), but still, I can’t really complain about outdoor swimming in February (although yes I did just try to).
Once we were ready, we had a lot to see. As I said, we had just about three days to see Singapore, and for the cursory overview we were doing, it was the perfect amount of time. It’s a great place for a short trip as well as for multiple visits; I for one cannot wait to go back – but that’s mostly for the food, which will be a separate post (there’s a whole lot to cover).
A great introduction to Singapore is to do the river walk (the river is called the Singapore River, which is easy I guess but boring), winding through the various quays and into the well-known sights of Marina Bay. We began our meandering tour at Clarke Quay, which was close to our hotel and, more importantly, full of great food. It’s always nice to walk along the water and gaze upon the fancy hotels (so many), the grand museums (which, strangely, never came up in any of the Singapore recommendations we researched, leading us to uncharacteristically just skip museums), and the perfect blue skies.
The River Walk will bring you to Raffles Place, which good old Stammy Rafs established in the 1820s as the main mercantile district, called Commercial Square originally but renamed for Stams in 1858. Raffles Place became a popular shopping district as well as a commercial and financial center for the region. For at least a century, this was also where migrants established themselves. Many South Indian traders and bankers set up shop in this area. It was also home to Singapore’s only underground mosque, established in the 1950s so the many Muslims working in the area could pray, and now still underground in the basement of the UOB Plaza.
You’d think Raffles Place would be near the Raffles Hotel, or at least I thought that, but the famous hotel is north of the river in not the most convenient location. We visited the famous Raffles Hotel because that’s where you are supposed to get the Singapore Sling, the gin-based drink that the Raffles Hotel bartender invented there in 1915. It’s just the thing to do, to get one from where it was first made. Hilariously, it’s said that the bartender, Ngiam Tong Boon, created the drink so that all the fancy ladies could drink alcohol in public, so I guess it was like the early cosmo? appletini? only far garls! Unfortunately, we were greeted with this:
Raffles Hotel was closed! And FYI, it is still undergoing this extensive refurbishment and is not due to open until August! The original Long Bar was closed, with only a gift shop open where you could buy a book about the hotel and a kit for making your own? I mean not that I actually wanted the Sling anyway but it was a downer for the husbo to not get to do the done thing. Fie, Raffles.
Oh well, back to the water, which I will always prefer over alcohol. The river walk takes you past the iconic (their word but true) Fullerton Hotel (which seems like it should be extraordinarily expensive considering the location and the name recognish but I just checked and it’s like a decidedly decent value for how nice it is given the average hotel price in Singapore?? next time babies), which once upon a time was the General Post Office Building (noice) and was built literally just for centennial celebrations? (extra noice), and past all the banks’ skyscrapers and down into what you’ve been waiting to see – the Marina Bay, home of, well all the famous things but especially that iconic (my/everyone’s word) triumvirate of Singapore’s skyline, the Marina Bay Sands.
Oh let’s zoom out a little and let y’all see what it really looks like.
So many people! It’s just like China (but so much cleaner!). Even though this is a hotel (and a casino now), the Marina Bay Sands to me really is the quintessential image for Singapore. I mean that’s where Race Across the World had its big finish; you can’t argue with that! And you definitely can’t argue with the greatest movie ever made, Crazy Rich Asians, which also features the MBS prominently and has the aforementioned RIDONK synchronized swimming performance on that incredible/terrifying roof. SO FUN.
While I think of this as the unofficial symbol of Singapore (I mean given the financial sitch there it kind of makes sense that the symbol would be a super fance hotel), the official symbol – I’m sorry, ‘mascot’ – of Singapore is even better. It’s a MERLION. Perched right on the east side of the bay at the Downtown Core bit of the city, the merlion statue is a mythical creature (duh) with the head of a lion and the body of a fish. It’s used to represent Singapore and Singaporeans in tourism, branding, sporting events, everything. And it’s awesome, because hello, the national thang is a merlion? Only Scotland and its unicorn tops that!
Of course, continuing the trend that the Raffles Hotel started, the Merlion was UNDER CONSTRUCTION during our visit. This is like how people coming this year to London feel when they see Big Ben all covered up, except 1000x worse because Big Ben is just a dumb clock and this is a MERLION.
The city set up a smaller copy nearby so that tourists could still get their picture with the merlion, but it’s small and fake so it’s nice but also kind of a kick in the pants.
So, disappointing, but it’s hard to stay mad when you’re in this fabo city. I mean, look at how great the sign behind Faker Merlion is:
I also really enjoyed this sign on Cavenagh Bridge, even though I don’t really enjoy the feeling that a ‘u’ is missing from that name:
Behind the Marina Bay Sands is one of my favorite things about Singapore, the Gardens by the Bay. I love an immaculate man-made super weird yet pretty garden-park, what can I say. The GbtB is 101 hectares of land right smack in the middle of the city, with beautiful flower gardens and interesting conservatories. Kind of like a Kew Gardens if the creators of it had their Pimms before instead of after. It’s free to walk through a lot of it, and costs $28 (Singapore dollars) to go into the conservatories, like the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest.
I love it!
Another day, we went into the Little India neighborhood, called Tekka in the Singapore Indian community. Contrasted with our experience of the downtown areas, the Indian neighborhood felt much more like a real city with real people living there, and not just working/visiting. Under the original Raffles plan for Singapore, ethnic Indians had to live in the Chulia Kampong region because Brits loved them some ethnic segregation/racism/being shit. That area became too crowded, and many Indians brought the overflow to what’s now this vibrant area. It may have developed around a former settlement for Indian convicts, but now it’s home to all kinds of people and businesses, as well as places of worship for several different religions.
It was hard to take pictures amid all the traffic but it was a really nice area to see. You don’t want to just stay in the shiny downtown.
When in Singapore, you’ll inevitably spend a lot of time in Chinatown, a hub of activity at all times but even moreso during Chinese New Year! We were fortunate to be there at this time of year (and it was the Year of the Cute Wittle Doggo Such a Good Boy) and Chinatown was CELEBRATING! It was so fun to see all the excitement and the random dance parties and all the decoration.
Chinatown is home to the Sri Mariamman Temple, the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore. Early in Singapore’s history, the temple gave refuge to Indian immigrants, and the temple had the only priests with the authority to perform Hindu marriages. If you won’t be in town for Chinese New Year, try to come in the fall, when the temple holds its super famous fire-walking ceremonies, where devotees walk on hot coals as a test of their devotion/skin burning point.
I didn’t get a great picture of the temple because of ALL OF THE PEOPLE but you can sort of make out how crazy cool the decor is, with the facade pretty much covered in statues and figures of gods and stuff.
Running through the heart of Chinatown is Smith Street, which we learned a forking harrowing lesson about thanks to some helpful/horrifying street signs. I love street signs giving information but dayum. So Smith Street, at the turn of the 20th century, was lined with brothels, like lots of them. The number of male immigrants far exceeded the number of female so brothels did a booming trade, but the prostitutes were subjected to a horrible life (#legalize) with no legal recourse when clients would almost certainly beat them, stiff them, and/or murder them. This unassuming street sign told us how men would usually just murder the women (prostitute and/or brothel owner) instead of paying. Since this was a living hell, many prostitutes killed themselves by jumping off buildings or overdosing on opium. COOL FACTS GUYS. now we all know.
Alright to cleanse the palate from that I’m going to share one food-ish picture, of my favorite thing, to remind us all that Singapore is full of wonderful things, not least of which is bubble tea!
Some of you know how I feel about bubble tea, and Singapore did not let me down. It was, rightly so, everywhere.
Funnily enough, even though we really enjoyed Singapore, the most memorable experience was waking up super early one morning to go to an Australian bar to watch the Super Bowl. I know, you’re like…wat? But the Philadelphia Eagles were playing (hence the * in the opening sentence when I said ‘recently’ but hey time is relative life moves at you fast &c) and that’s MY JAWN, B! This was the first time I watched the entire thing all the way through, and it was well rewarded with the Eagles winning! We made lots of friends that morning, with the bar entirely filled with American expats and tourists, just a hilarious experience.
It was pretty special to share such a random experience in SINGAPORE with a bunch of people from Pennsylvania (and a bunch of New Englanders too who got shown what’s what). I don’t really care about football and the NFL is MONSTERS but I’m still allowed to celebrate Philly mmker? Here’s a picture of my dog celebrating the Eagles’ win AND the Year of the Dog so you can’t complain.
We really enjoyed Singapore, even though we didn’t live it up like the craziest and richest of Asians but more like the normallest of travelers. There’s so much great stuff left to talk about next time – the food.
