Singapore Foodie and Newbie Meet Up

I can’t help but breaking out into the (annoying) Disney song…It’s a small, small world! 🙂 But it sure is, when you are thousands of miles away from what you used to call “home” and you meet people through random coincidences that are not only from where you lived and share similar interests but are or were in the same situation as you – a newbie to Singapore (or was) and a foodie!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my family and I have now moved to Singapore. We are what one may call “expats” which is the term this country is very used to by now, what with a majority of the nation being made up of them. Singapore is not strange to me by any means, in fact this is the first country I visited outside of the US when I was in high school – my very first “foreign” (phoren?) visit as we used to say in India:) My uncle and his family have lived here for over 2 decades now and I used to visit them during my summer break. But the Singapore then and the Singapore now is vastly different. For one, I don’t remember it being so crazy expensive (not that I used to really care about what others spent on me when I was a teenager) and I don’t know if I ever noticed how many expats lived here. Again, I probably didn’t care to notice then. I didn’t notice how jaw-dropping expensive owning a car was and yet how many Ferraris and Maseratis were on the street (beats Dallas hollow).

In any case, here I am in week 3 and a half of this “new” city/country exploring it like a tourist in some ways or just trying to keep my tween-ager busy.

So it was just last week that I was doing a Google search for the local wholesale fruits and veggie market to begin my juicing regimen. Google served up this blog entry from another inspiring blogger that I mentioned earlier. Well, its been 7 exact days after that search and I can proudly say that I now have 5 new friends in Singapore and believe it or not, half of them are from Texas:), and one actually happens to be from WI, which incidentally is where we lived before TX!! What else can you say but “IT’s A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL”….

So after my initial email exchange with Andrea Stunz, the author of Our Family Adventures – she was gracious enough to invite me to a shopping and dining shindig with “the girls”. Little did I know that the others were all relatively new or had moved to Singapore within the past year!  So we hit it off and were soon chatting like long lost girlfriends….there was so much to talk about. And so this is how I met Randi, JoAnn, Karie, Staci and of course Andrea, the social butterfly that brought us all together.

We walked around the famous Arab Street, supposedly the haven for textiles, Persian carpets, wicker, beautiful lamps, and did I mention amazing food:)

We strolled along, chatting, exchanging information, buying some tchotchkes, admiring the beautiful shops, imagining what we would do with the ornate lamps we would buy before we left Singapore back to the US:) and so on. No, can’t use them in the condos here – rooms are so much smaller than what we are used to.

We finally stopped for food at this simple no frills cafe called Cafe le Caire. And I have to say that was the highlight of this place. Plates of Mezze – hummus, baba ganoush, falafel, tahini, olives, hummus bil tomato (soft chickpeas with tomato sauce), foul (fava beans in gravy), eggplant in yoghurt and of course, pita bread.

I have to say this was the highlight of the day. The dishes were flavorful and light and (as anyone who knows me well knows), had so many vegetarian options that my day was made:)

We had such a good time that we parted promising to make this a weekly lunch group. Our next stop is to savor Dim Sum in China Town, so more on that next week.

Thank you Andrea for making it feel “like I was back in Texas” in your words:). It truly felt like we had all known each for ages, so I guess our meeting was meant to be in some ways. Looking forward to more such outings and a continued friendship. To the “Lunch Bunch”!