Monday, February 25, 2008

All of my little adjustments

I knew getting into this that I'd have a lot of adjusting to do. I'm not just referring to the getting married and growing up part. I'm referring to the total uprooting of every custom I've spent my last 23 years growing to understand and changing it over to this weird Asian standard of life. I say "weird" meaning "very different from America".

The first adjustment: Celsius temperatures. No one even acknowledges that Fahrenheit even exists over here. One might think that this is no big deal, but wait till you want to bake something. To bake cookies in a 375 degree oven, you have to set the Celsius gauge to 176.666666....which is ridiculous. For a perfectionist, it invokes anxiety to no end. Not only do my cookies cook ridiculously fast, they make me question my normally kick ass baking ability.
The second: meatballs. As weird as it sounds, it is something that gets to you at first. To Americans, Italians and any other Americanized person in the States, a meatball is a round glob of cooked beef, sausage or pork. In Singapore, a meat ball is a white ball of fish. A big white glob that they serve in a broth to make it look that much more appealing. Aaron and I discussed this one night over dinner. Fish is a flaky meat by nature. So, how the heck does it stick together in a ball? We just decided that we probably didn't want to know.

Third: Chili sauce. They put this red goo on everything! It's sweet and spicy and they have the same stuff in the States, but this crap often replaces ketchup in most restaurants --thus the reason for my irritation. Ketchup, in my opinion, is one of the best concoctions ever created. I have even been known to eat certain foods just so I can drench them with ketchup (i.e. onion rings, hot dogs and meat loaf). I'm not even kidding, I won't eat those foods unless there's ketchup. So it's like they've taken away one of the greatest loves of my life and replaced it with this sugary spicy crap that only mocks me with its red coloring (which almost looks like ketchup). I'm seriously considering keeping a bottle in my purse when we go out. Sad, but necessary.

Don't get me wrong, these are minor adjustments that I will be fine with once I get used to it all. There are adjustments that I find very nice too. I like that everyday is summer and I can go to the pool whenever. It's also nice that almost everyplace delivers here. McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut and Sakae Sushi all deliver. I do miss Taco Bell so so much. :( I'm probably better off though.

4 comments:

Cori said...

When I used to work at Children's Mercy they took temps in celsius, and I hated it, too. Took too many conversions to figure out how high a kid's temp was.
Oh, and those meatballs look disguisting! BTW, there's a guy on TV who goes around the world eating gross, I mean, exotic foods. He says durians are the one food he has not been able to eat, and this dude eats bugs. Oh, and check your email.

Anonymous said...

Hi Megan,
You seem as though you are having a wonderful and interesting time over there. I am very jealous that it is warm there. I really would like to go to teh pool, but I will take the cold weather over eating fish/meatball anyday. Becareful what you eat. :)
Miss you Love you!

Mel said...

I started to gag litterly when i read the fish meatball thing. Bc when I saw the pic i thought it looked like a dumpling which i like bc i like dough a lot and then i read it and the memory of me accidently eating fish on the cruise came shooting back into my head and it was really really bad.

singaporegirl said...

fyi...those white ball things in your soup are NOT meatballs. They are fishballs. Meatballs here are also made from meat...usually minced pork or beef.