Livin' a dream, everyday

It has probably been close to a year when I had chilli crab last time. Luckily there is plenty of delicious (;-P) foods ready to be microwaved for lunch right here at convenience of my home office.

PS. the title of the blog owes to one specific officer of Bureau of Reclamation over at Hoover Dam on the border of Arizona and Nevada. His day job is to inspect every single passing vehicle for bombs or whatever. This is what he responded when I asked How are you.

Kung Pao Liquorice and Coffee, please

I ventured to have a lunch in a local Chinese restaurant called Guangzhou Garden to keep the reverse home sickness at bay. Pretty authentic tasting dishes I would say, but I just gotta love the way the two food cultures integrate so seamlessly.

First of all there is a salad table (raastepöytä), which you would not expect to find in Asia. Not that I am complaining. I was actually often missing fresh side salads with the never ending supply of oil soaked noodles.

Secondly they naturally offered bread with the dishes. And not just any bread but proper crispbread (näkkileipä). Chinese restaurants in Singapore do obviously have pao on their menu, but that's not really the same thing as bread being an integral part of every single meal in Finland (and in all Nordic countries alike). By the way I could have added Liu Sha Bao to my list of things that I miss. As well as having a pao with Chilli crab.

Thirdly they offered coffee and candy as a desert. Serving coffee in Finland is just given, but once again coffee was not accompanied with just any candy but salty liquorice, which is a very Finnish concept and somewhat of an acquired taste. I am not much of a candyman myself, but I do remember enjoying lätkäliiga when I was a kid. (By the way, I just witnessed a massive injustice where lätkäliiga does not have its own Wikipedia entry! I trust that some proper candy aficionado attends to this immediately and makes the world a little bit of a better place).

Finnish cultural imperialism pt 2

Back home at SG and here I come across yet another weird example of globalization. I picked up the ice cream in the picture below from local 7-eleven downstairs to my office.

I truly have trouble understanding what sense does it make to ship ice cream from Finland to Singapore. Especially with very standard product by a global conglomerate. Then again it does keep any potentially dawning home sickness at bay.

 

PS. In case you are wondering (like me after rereading this entry after almost 2 years) why this is called part 2: here was the first sign of Finns taking over the world.