Busting out of the house

Since my new job hasn't started yet, I find myself with a lot of spare time. I enjoy spare time. Spare time is nice. Ya know what isn't nice? When spare time becomes the only thing you have. So now that I've watched an entire season of True Blood, re-read Breaking Dawn (my favorite Twilight book in the series), cleaned every inch of our home -- minus the man cave (because it smells like a boy) and exhausted every internet site I could surf, I needed something to do. And I needed a sense of purpose.

So I made up an errand. It wasn't an important one, but in order to give myself that sense of purpose I made it sound important in my head. I needed a recipe binder. I have tons of paper scraps and index cards with recipes all over my kitchen. I also didn't want to just rewrite them in a shiny new book because I think that kills the character of the recipe. I like the tattered recipe scrap with my mom's handwriting on it. So I needed a binder that I could personalize. And not just any recipe binder. This one had to match the one in my head. They sell similar recipe binders in every bookstore and I looked through them all. But, I wasn't going to buy an overpriced, crappier version of the perfect recipe binder that I have in my head. So I went on a search to gather the necessary materials to create my own.

I hopped on the bus and rode to the MRT and then rode down to Orchard Road.

Here is my walk down Orchard Road (Singapore's shopping district) on my way to Takashimaya, the mother of all shopping malls.


Doesn't it look like half shopping district, half jungle? I really like Orchard Road. It's pretty and there's lots of westerners standing around looking lost. I fit right in. I'm lost most of my life.

Three hours later, I've gathered the tools to create my book. It was a long process that involved several stores and examining several binder prospects. When I finally checked out at some Japanese book store, the clock said it was 4:35. That meant that I had an hour to get home (because that's approximately how long it takes on the MRT/bus to make it there) and 30 minutes to make dinner for Aaron. That so wasn't happening. My shopping trip tired me out.

This is what dinner looks like in Singapore when Megan is too lazy to cook it.

No, not the Singaporeans sitting at the table. Look behind them. These are the food stalls in Northpoint Mall. We come here sometimes for cheap Singaporean food. As you can see there are tons of these little "shops" to pick from. Each one claims to serve a different type of cuisine. However they all manage to incorporate rice and fish into most of their dishes. I'm not sure how that makes them different from each other, but whatever. The best part is that each meal costs about four Sing dollars. That's about $2.64 in the States. I love CHEAP! I also love TAKE AWAY.

So we dined on Baked Chicken Cheese rice, Spring Onion Chicken and Mee Goreng in the comfort of our own airconditioned, English-speaking home. Not that there's anything wrong with not having either of those things.