Chinese, Indonesian, and Japanese

I’ve been eating Chinese food again. While my in-laws are here in Perth my stomach gets filled with lots of Chinese food and Indonesian food…
These cuisine use lots of oil in cooking, so I really miss Japanese food.  Not those Japanese food that you find in Japanese restaurants here like karaage and tempura, but the real homy food like nimono and nitsuke.

Anyway, my stomach was filled with Chinese/Singapore food tonight at Bamboo in Willetton.  I wasn’t too hungry thanks to 1.5 hotdogs I had at IKEA afternoon, but my in-laws ordered 4 dishes for just 4 of us.  Pan-fried tooth fish, sambal spinach, Thai-style chicken in lemongrass sauce, and 1/2 roasted duck. It was quite a lot of food as in-laws don’t usually eat much.

I went outside to have a short stroll around Hi-Mart (Korean grocery shop) next door, and when I got back to the table two dishes had already been served.
The tooth-fish was great. Crispy fish in buttery sauce did match with plain steamed rice. I found sambal spinach was bit oily, but I guess that’s what it’s supposed to be.

Thai-style chicken was the one they ignite flame underneath the aluminum foil.  Roast duck had the beautiful colored crispy skin.  It’s just what people expect roast duck to be.

We couldn’t finish the food as I expected and ended up taking the roast duck home.  Eating this type of food once in awhile is fine, but now I’m longing for a bowl of simple ochazuke for tomorrow breakfast.

Climate in Singapore and Perth

The other day I had a visitor from Singapore.  He came to Perth on business, and said that the weather in Perth is totally opposite to Singapore’s.  What I remember about Singapore was also the humid climate.  He says it’s about 70~80% humidity… oh my gosh.  No wonder I felt my body heavier over there!

It must be terrible climate to wash clothes… he says the clothes don’t get dry for few days after washing.  In Perth it all get dried in 10 minutes in summer because of the super dry climate.  (someone said to me before that humidity in Perth during summer is 0~5%! Is it true??)  

I always loved having four seasons in a year in Japan, being able to experience many things in different seasons, and thought that I couldn’t do much of those in Perth compared with Japan.  But, according to this visitor, Singapore is worse.  Because there is no season in Singapore (always hot and humid, like other Asian countries) it’s hard to remember what he did in when and where.  I mean, for example, if you lost your passport long time ago and remember wearing half sleeve Tshirt on the day, you can at least guess that it was around summer time when you lost the passport.  If you bought a cat and there’s sakura tree in your memory, you know it was spring.  In Singapore you can’t have such sense of time, because there is nothing to compare to.  Umm I see..  I don’t think I will like living in a place which has only one season.

24 hours in Singapore

We had 24 hours to transit in Singapore, so we booked our rooms in Hilton hotel so that we can take a rest before arriving Japan and also have a little shopping there.  It was actually my first time to go out of Singapore airport.  Now Singapore is the 3rd country that I’ve been to!  (1st: Australia, 2nd: Indonesia)

Oh my gosh, Singapore is very humid…  I was wearing tight jeans, and it was so hot :p  I should had worn short pants or something…  And, I was wearing mule with heel, so my foot got tired after walking around Orchard street.  Silly me, why I chose to wear this mule..  The first thing I bought in Singapore was a pair of flat sandals.  (><)

I knew that our first day in Japan will be a very tiring day as we need to travel around, so I had a deep sleep!  Then we went out to have dinner in the food court in Takashimaya department store.

We had chicken rice, rojak, prawn & spare rib noodle soup, laksa, ice kachang, chandol, green tea egg tart, and taro potato bread.  Parents were having some food, I don’t remember..  It was good, I love Asian food 🙂 and we won’t be able to eat these type of food in Japan anyway.

At midnight we took a plane and headed to KIX (Kansai airport) in Japan.