Pandan and coconut bagel, Singapore. The inside of the bagel is very light green from the pandan.

If there is one thing that I have learned from writing a blog while living in Southeast Asia, it is that there is a huge, silent market for bagels. 

Bagels in Singapore is one of the most popular search terms that leads strangers to this site.  You know who you are. 

I generally stick with garlic bagels.  It was one of my pet peeves in Maryland that Whole Foods would always have all sorts of frou-frou blueberry and wheatgerm bagels but would never stock a simple onion or garlic bagel.  That is wrong.  They are bagel frauds.

A few days ago we ordered more bagels from the NYC Bagel Factory of Singapore and they threw in six extra bagels to make up for delivery problems a few months ago.  This time, I had to choose nineteen bagels so I deviated from the usual to try something new and unique to Southeast Asia.

A pandan and coconut bagel. 

Pandan leaves are used in Singapore to flavor desserts and bread, and also can be used to wrap and grill chicken.  It is a very popular flavor and is often paired with shredded coconut or kaya, a type of coconut jam.  You can buy the leaves in the grocery stores but we also have some growing in our neighborhood.  It gives most things a slight green tint.

Pandan cake with shredded coconut on the side of the cake.

All of the bagels were good — they also met with approval from Elysia’s parents, who live in Queens – but I think I prefer pandan in a real dessert.

Elysia’s dad celebrated his birthday while in Singapore so I picked up a pandan and kaya cake from a nearby bakery. 

It was delicious but, as they taught me to say in graduate school, more research is needed.

Citrus and her grandfather, blowing out his birthday cake candle.

Today we began to give our five-year-old daughter an allowance.  It was a formal event with a long explanation while the family sat together on the couch.  The conversation began with us offering two Singapore Dollars each week and Citrus immediately lobbying for three.

We stuck with two, equivalent to about US$1.50.  Just enough to buy a small treat for instant gratification or set aside a dollar for a larger purchase. 

We can always increase it later, perhaps by adding a matching contribution.  She can be vested after about five years.  Can you tell that I worked on financial and retirement security issues for years?

We patiently explained the prices of some of the things that she likes or has wanted to purchase.  A can of Milo from a vending machine, a bag of potato chips, a Kinder Joy – banned in the United States! — or two turns on the kiddie rides at the mall.  Alternately, she could forgo some treats and save up for the Dora Bubble Machine sitting on a shelf in our Navy Exchange.  It turned into a small math lesson, adding by twos.

She was very excited with the opportunity to have her own money and make her own choices.  But she does not want to spend her allowance quickly.  Instead she wants to save it all so that she has “lots and lots of it and is very rich.”

We asked her what she planned to do with all of her money.

I am going to save it so that I can buy some of the things that you will not buy for me!

Oh?  Like what?

Like pears!  And long bread!  And book holders!

Our poor daughter.  Deprived of fruit, baguettes and book-ends to tidy up her book shelf.

We managed to stay in our chairs while trying not to laugh.

High on Elysia’s grandmother’s sightseeing checklist was visiting the Merlion near the downtown Singapore waterfront.  It is a destination of almost every tourist in Singapore but we had yet to visit, partly because we live on the other side of Singapore.  Or, as the people here say, in the heartlands.

I have decided that if I want to be in the group photos, I had better bring my tripod because handing over the camera to a stranger always results in a picture like this.

A few mainland Chinese tourists were shocked that Elysia was out and about with the baby.  Traditionally, a Chinese mother is expected to stay inside for a full month after giving birth both for the health of the baby and the mother’s recovery.  This means few or no showers so that her weakened body does not get cold and she’s also supposed to eat a lot of confinement meals which are heavy on heat, such as ginger.

We figure that just staying out of malls is a pretty good step in the right direction, and have only gone out a handful of times, so Elysia told the tourists that things are different in Singapore.  They just stared.

It has been a busy week. Citrus started a new gymnastics class and went to a tea party, we showed my in-laws some sights of Singapore, I hosted a cooking class and tomorrow am teaching a financial education class aboard a boat!

 I am a little behind in the writing and posting photos but this moment on the couch pretty much sums up the other parts of the week.  Hope to catch up this weekend!

Baby schmaby.  There is bigger news around here.  

I ate durian and liked it.

If you have never been near a durian, you do not know how monumental this is. 

We have been in Singapore for sixteen months and while I have gotten used to the rotting smell, I just could not overcome it to enjoy the taste. 

Even unopened it is banned from taxis, trains, hotels and hospitals.  As Anthony Bourdain once said,

Your breath will smell as if you’d been French-kissing your dead grandmother.

He likes durian, and that’s one of the nicer descriptions.  It is also not an exaggeration.

I have tried before.  When Citrus and I were traveling through Borneo, I ordered durian cheesecake and had to leave it unfinished on the plate. 

Unfinished cheesecake.  There, I said it.

Elysia’s dad and grandmother were looking forward to durian on their trip to Singapore and it was their first purchase.  They bought three, a high-quality grade for those who can tell the difference.   It took a week for the smell to leave the car. 

So, as the sailors say when telling a story of adventure:

THERE I WAS . . .

When Elysia’s family arrived from Queens, Lemon was already past his due date.  This gave them a few days to settle in and get to know the neighborhood. They now know mainly how to find the nearest dim sum hawker stall and where to buy the local Chinese newspaper.

When our daughter, Citrus, was one month old, we drove to Long Island and held a Full Month Party with Elysia’s sister.  They had a baby within two weeks of each other.

Sisters: May and August, 2005

Unfortunately, Elysia’s family will not be here when Lemon turns one month old.  Still, Elysia and her grandmother made red eggs and ginger last week for her maternity leave.  We have decided that we will have multiple, small celebrations throughout the coming year since our friends and family are scattered across the United States.

Elysia and her grandmother, cutting ginger

Frying the ginger, without oil, to reduce its moisture

Boiling eggs

With the hardboiled eggs peeled and sitting nearby, a full bottle of black rice vinegar is poured into the pot.

The ginger is added to the black rice vinegar.

Eggs added, pig's feet are optional. This stuff lasts forever.

A portrait of our son, Lemon, at eight days old.  The photo below him is of Citrus when she was seven days old.

About a month ago my daughter looked at me and asked point-blank “Why did you name me after an orange?” 

I blame my father for our children’s names.  He worked for 23 years at UC Berkeley’s Agricultural Publications as a graphic designer.  When I was a child he would bring home beautiful photos and illustrations of California’s agricultural products and the pests that eat them.  I remember one in particular about citrus fruits in various stages of being eaten by fly larvae.

Citrus, and now her brother, are named after hybrid fruits that are half-mandarin oranges.  They are half Chinese.  And their names have other meanings and tenuous connections to California as well. 

We have no pests in our family.

The photo of Lemon was taken with a Nikon D90, SB-600 flash and 35 lemons.  Additional lemons, primarily along the perimeter, were added digitally.   I almost like the uncropped and unfinished version better.

The photo of Citrus was taken five years ago with a Sony Cybershot 4.0 megapixel camera and 21 clementines with more added digitally as well.  At that time I had never heard of Anne Geddes but just thought fruit would make a nice background.

Military families tend to move every year and a half to three years and sometimes it can feel you have just settled into one place before it is time to start packing and planning to live somewhere else.  Just passing through.

Three friends of ours — a Coast Guard family — moved recently from Singapore to Missouri.  Already about a quarter of the people in our neighborhood never met them.  Memories and friendships do not fade so much as get scattered across the globe.

Still, it was a little surprising to find them enshrined at our local Starbucks even though I knew it was Karin’s mini-vacation spot in Singapore.

VIPs, top left, at the Starbucks Sembawang

Introducing Lemon. Born at 10:36 p.m. on Tuesday, August 17, 2010.
Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Singapore.  7 pounds 13 ounces, 21 inches.

Lemon, age 1/2 hour.

Citrus meets her brother, Lemon (12 hours old), for the first time.

More photos to come.