Midnight in Singapore

Woody Allen is an odd little man. But I think he’s onto something with Midnight in Paris: people like to imagine their golden age to be in the past rather than the present. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Owen Wilson’s character thought Paris in the 1920s was his nirvana; I’ve convinced myself modern-day Singapore and New York are mine. Husband and I lived in Singapore pre-kids, hunting for ‘die-die must-try’ local dishes, shopping and lazing in the pool at our condo complex. In 2009, we spent 10 months in New York when Husband got a university scholarship. Lately I’ve gone all grass-is-greener about wanting to live the expat life again. I reminisce about New York: its diners, museums, shopping; our weekly Fresh Direct grocery deliveries in those lovely cardboard boxes that felt like gifts, the funky Thai Market restaurant down near 110th Street and its divine $8 lunches, window-shopping in Soho, cocktails in the Meat-packing District. The social isolation and five months of snow? Forgotten. Back in Singapore for the first time in seven years, I’m awed by the explosion of stores on Orchard Road, the frenetic night markets, the hawker food, the exotic wafts of durian fruit in the air. Never mind that it’s 32C every single day, with 100 percent humidity, it feels so alive! Sydney seems vanilla by comparison. But I (and Husband) know what I’m like. I’d move to New York or Singapore and find something (many things) to complain about. If not the weather, then the shoving masses, the distance from family or the lack of lactose-free cream in the supermarket. So I’ve resolved – after a little spat with fed-up Husband during cocktails last night at Raffles Hotel, darling – to try and learn from Woody and live in the present, love every moment of my holiday (well apart from when Sprog 2 burst into hysterical, inconsolable tears because she couldn’t decide what to buy from the gift shop at Singapore Zoo, I could do without one) and look forward to returning to my lucky, lucky life in Sydney. Well, I’ll try.
PS: Don’t you just love white, middle-class angst? So heart-wrenching . . .  So self-indulgent …

LAST NIGHT’S MENU: Our old favorite, Kopi Tiam, has lost it’s lustre. Adequate but uninspiring char kway teow, chicken curry and Chinese greens in oyster sauce. Damn.