Saturday, July 26, 2008

A roti prata, mail run kind of morning

I went on the mail run with Aaron this morning. Do you know what a big deal that is? It's huge. Like, Michael Jackson growing back his blackness huge. The mail run is an early morning type of venture. I am not an early morning type of venturer. However, after asking me to go three times, I finally caved and said I'd go. Eh.
We left the house at 4:30 a.m. That's not a typo friends. That's what time crazy people think work should begin. For anyone who knows me, this is a major feat in itself. I am the worst morning person on the face of the earth (next to my sweet niece and lovely sis). My morning stories are even legendary.
My family nicknamed me "Agnes" because it was the ugliest name they could think of to match my ugly morning attitude. My friends in college would argue over whose turn it was to wake me up to go camp at Allen Fieldhouse for KU basketball games. My roommates didn't dare enter my room before I came out awake first. I do not like mornings -- or any other time I may be tired.
Somehow, Aaron got me to agree to this self-inflicted torture. I refused to speak to him until coffee and the presence of a stranger (Simon, the mail truck driver) forced me to be nice. Coffee came first.
This is coffee-in-a-bag. Kopi-O to be exact. Kopi is the Hokkien word for coffee. Kopi-O means coffee without milk. There are several ways to order Kopi, however all involve sugar, but the bag is only for "take-away" (Singaporean for "to-go"). There's a list of the different kinds of Kopi here on Wikipedia. I personally don't care for sugar in my coffee, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I drank as much as I could of my "liquid niceness".
We drove all the way to Changi Airport to pick up numerous boxes and bags of mail. It's a lot of lifting, recording and tossing. Boring as hell. Not one bit of fun to be had. Yay, 4 a.m.
After all of the mail had been loaded up, we wandered over to the airport cafeteria for some roti prata. Mmmmm!
Roti prata is delicious. Roti prata and I may become BFF. The word "roti" is Hindu for bread and the word "prata" which means flat. It tastes like a cross between a crepe and a pancake, but looks like a tortilla. It's made of dough that is tossed in the air to make it very thin and then cooked over a flat grill. It is filled with your choice of all different sorts of things: chocolate, cheese or even bananas. As a newbie, I went with egg.
This is the curry sauce that comes with your roti prata. Swimming in the middle there is what Simon described as "lady fingers". Um no. Lady fingers are a type of dessert. Those do not look like dessert. I steered clear of the finger-like appendages. Thanks, but no thanks kids. Other than that, the sauce was really good. It was like a really spicy enchilada sauce.
When the cook found out that this was my first roti prata experience, he had to show off his mad prata skills. He sent this out free of charge.
In an effort to be a little bold, I ordered a "rose drink". I was TOO bold. It was sick. It tasted like soap. Old lady soap, at that. I'm done with the boldness.
Then, on the way home, Simon gave us each a little candy to try. The package read "Creamy Corn". It looked like a Whether's Original so I gave it a shot. At first taste, it was deliciously salty and sweet. Then, once the corn flavor came through, I made Aaron throw it out the window when Simon wasn't looking. I still cannot view corn or red beans as dessert of any kind.
Watch out though, I'm sending this candy home for you all to try as soon as I find it. It's too awful to experience alone :)


2 comments:

Cori said...

Adventures at 4am? Excuse me, have we met? That brother-in-law of mine is a BRAVE man.
That coffee looks so strange. Why the bag? Is the bag hot? Is that a straw I see coming out of it? Hmmm...interesting. I enjoyed the "liquid niceness" comment. Ditto for moi.

singaporegirl said...

you CAN order kopi without any sugar...kopi = coffee, O = without milk, kosong = no sugar. so your plain ole black coffee would be kopi-O-kosong. try it. =)