Dream: when cows are extinct

(This was the first dream I had in 2013)

In this dream, cows have become extinct all over the world, and thus milk no longer exists. I am working for the Chinese CIA-equivalent secret service, and I receive a brief on my next mission to a certain unnamed Pacific island where there is allegedly a geriatric cow still living.

I fly to the island, a tropical paradise with white sandy beaches and gently swaying coconut trees. Somewhere in a village of scattered thatch roof huts, I find a wrinkly old cow, somewhat malnourished with folds of skin hanging low. I convince the owner to give me some of its milk, which I dutifully store in an empty 2L Dairy Farmers container.

I open the brief which tells me my next instructions. I have to drink a sachet of some effervescent drink, which cleans out my gut completely and gets rid of all the acid and bacteria. Then I drink the entire 2L of milk and it's supposed to sit in my stomach until I get back to China.

Next I am flying in a plane over the ocean, and land in a place called Clare with tin-roof buildings making up the airport. My brief tells me that this is where I will receive my next instructions.

While sitting in the tin shack, a girl my age comes up to me and says "我是奶牛 (I am Dairy Cow)". I take this to be my cue and stand to greet her. She tells me that I need to regurgitate the milk for her and she will take it away, but I suddenly become afraid that she is some type of enemy and refuse. She doesn't object and instead tells me she will take me to Hu Jintao.

We get back on the plane and she sits next to me in the emergency exit row. She whispers in my ear that when the plane is skimming down to very close to the ocean, that will be our cue to open the emergency exit and jump out. A ship will be waiting below for us. As the plane gets lower and lower, I think about the consequences for the rest of the plane's passengers once we have thrown out the emergency exit window. But there's no time and we jump out.

The next thing I know, I am back in my flat having already gotten rid of the milk. The phone rings and a man says on the other end that I am in danger because someone has found out about the milk mission. He asks me who I have told about it, and I say no-one. The only person that knows about it is Dairy Cow, and I feel disappointed that she has betrayed me because I thought she was a nice person.

I go to her house, and ask her if she has told anyone. She says that she is a loner with no friends, and definitely did not tell anyone else. I suddenly get the feeling that we are being watched, and we start scouring her apartment for any taps. After searching high and low we finally spot a little black disc inside a ceiling ventilation grille.

"We have to get out of here, now we are both in danger". I say to her and we get ready to leave. 

And that is when I wake up.

Ethiopian food

I've been asked so many times since I came back from Ethiopia what I actually did there, to which my usual reply is "ate lots of food and drank lots of coffee". True I could go on about all the historical sites, but what will really stick in my mind is the food.

Injera
Where better to start than injera, the national food. Made from a grain called tef, which is only found in Ethiopia, it is served at every meal and forms the staple of Ethiopian food. I find it really strange how it's not found anywhere else, and how there is actually no way to describe it because there is no "other food equivalent" to compare it to!

 Injera with lentil stew (Top view, Addis)

Resembling a large floppy flannel (or bathmat), it looks rubbery and unappealing. Mostly it takes on a light brown or grey colour, but occasionally we found lighter injera which is meant to be of higher quality. The batter is left to ferment for several days, which accounts for the sour taste as well as the bubbles on one side.

Injera is served with the dish of your choice, usually either a stew or something fried such as what seemed to be the national favourite, tibs (fried meat). There were generally few vegetarian options, except on fasting days when it was easy to find vegetarian food. My staples were shiro (pureed chickpeas), messir wat (lentil stew) and beyanetu (a mix of everything on fasting days).
 

  Tibs, the national dish of stir fried meat (bus pit-stop)

A non-veg Beyanetu for tourists (Habesha, Gonder)

  

 The best Beyanetu ever (Seven Olives, Lalibela)

 

 Spicy fish stew (Cafe Wude, Bahir Dar)

 Raw meat, a real delicacy (random roadside pub, Babille)

 I wasn't the biggest fan of injera to start with, but soon I got used to the taste. It seemed to accompany the spices of the dishes quite well, and after a while it felt strange to go a few meals without eating injera.


Breakfast
 
Breakfast is one of my favourite meals of the day. We were so lucky to stumble across No Name cafe in Aksum, where we had the best breakfasts in Ethiopia.

Fatar is an interesting breakfast - bread, probably from the day before, is fried with berbera (a type of red spice mix) and topped with fried eggs, a little tomato, red onion and chilli. Yoghurt is poured over the whole thing and then it's all tossed together. We discovered this breakfast by watching what others were eating at No Name, and it was probably my favourite breakfast in Ethiopia.

Another common breakfast food is foul, a garlicky chickpea mash eaten with bread. The one we had at No Name had plenty of chilli added, but in Harar the special foul wasn't very spicy at all, instead accompanied by a mix of eggs, tomatoes, lentils and broad beans.

 

Special foul (random place, Harar)

In Bahir Dar we had this dish of chechebsa, like thin fried pieces of dough mixed with spices and fried egg. It reminded me of mianpian, a noodle dish eaten in north-eastern China.

Chechebsa with egg (Cafe Wude, Bahir Dar)

In Harar there was a Muslim specialty of fatira, a crispy pancake served with egg or honey (or both)

Fatira with honey (Cafe Abyssinia, Harar)

Juice
Fresh juice is such a luxury, especially in a relatively fruit-deprived country. Most of the time we bought bananas and oranges to eat, but the fruit shake joints usually had avocado, papaya and guava juice.
 

Juice house, Harar

One can get a mixed juice, where the available juices are layered. Most juices are served with lime and sometimes with this strange red syrup which I never figured out.

Mixed juice (papaya/avocado/guava), Aksum

Coffee

Most days I would have 2-3 cups of coffee, sometimes more (especially in Addis when I could visit Tomoca!) There were many antique-looking espresso machines leftover from the Italian days, and the most memorable of these aside from the one in Tomoca was the one in a dark little bar opposite Africa Hotel in Aksum. This was a rusty red number, which gleamed a little in the dark and pumped out a damn smooth espresso.

Of course, there were many opportunities to drink coffee the traditional way, with coffee brewed in a terracotta pot over hot coals, then poured into tiny cups and taken black with copious amounts of sugar (up to 1/3 of the cup). 

The coffee ceremony involves collecting the right type of grass (to bring in a sense of nature), burning special incense and the ritual preparation of the coffee. Traditionally it is also served with popcorn, which is a combination I never got used to.

 

Ambo
Last but not least, I loved sparkling water from a place called Ambo, about 50km west of Addis. Apparently the spring water here naturally flowed out of the ground with so many bubbles that even if left out overnight, it would still be bubbly the next day! I really wanted to go to Ambo to have an Ambo bath, but was told that the tap water in Ambo was flat. Disappointed, I resorted to drinking more Ambo instead.

Vegetarian friendliness
Finally, a little note on the degree of difficulty in getting vegetarian food in Ethiopia. Though I wasn't strictly vegetarian, I mostly stayed away from meat as my encounters with meat were far from appetising. Think large carcasses hanging outside restaurants from which your meal is chopped, lots of flies, non-existent refridgeration.. It was easy enough to find something vegetarian to eat, but I found the variety to be lacking on non-fasting days. There was almost always pasta with tomato sauce, and failing that, there's always shiro.

It was frustrating to see lots of vegetables in the market that just don't make it onto the menu because there was a perception that people want to eat meat when they go out to eat. Vegetables like cabbage and pumpkin hardly ever made it into restaurants, because they were considered "home food" or "poor food". Others like spinach were ubiquitously cooked with meat, and it was hard for non-Amharic speaking people to explore different options.

All up it wasn't too bad for vegetarians though - at least two days of the week (Wed & Fri) one can eat well!   

2012 ->2013

As the clock ticked into 2012, I was at Kirsty and Dev's house, where a whole bunch of us in various states of drunkenness had an all night-long water fight. It started in a semi-civilised way with water guns, then there were water bombs everywhere, and finally multiple garden hoses were dragged out. Everything was soaked and bunny Joey had to be packed away for fear of drowning. Shortly after midnight I was dumped unceremoniously in the pool by a bunch of residents, and whilst there decided that 2011 was a great year of fun!

As the clock ticked into 2013, I was struck by how different it all was. In some ways it was exactly the way it was before I went to Darwin - a quiet little gathering, lots of food and laughter.. I was happy, but at the same time I missed the randomness and craziness of 2011.

There was not very much random about 2012. I went to work, I learnt lots of things, and that was basically the end. In between I met up with friends, ate lots of food, played music and occasionally travelled. It wasn't a bad year, but it left a strange after taste... of boredom.

I need something else to happen in 2013. Bring it on.

Delirious with durian, NYE 2013

Tomoca

I was sitting in the waiting room of my dentist a few weeks before I went to Ethiopia, randomly flipping through magazines. I chanced upon an article on the history of coffee, and was intrigued to discover that coffee had originated in Ethiopia. As I later came to know, no story on Ethiopian coffee could possibly omit a mention of Tomoca!

Tomoca is the oldest continuously operating cafe in Addis, this branch off a side street of Churchill Ave having started in 1953. There's a newer branch inside a fancy glass building a few hundred metres down the road, but that just feels like an ordinary cafe.

The inside is stuffed full of coffee paraphernalia, some of which must date back to the Italian occupation. These giant old coffee machines are no longer used, but sit silently on a benchtop, watching the hustle and bustle.

One pays at the front counter, the salesgirls cool as cucumbers while dealing with a dozen customers at a time thrusting money in their faces. In exchange, one gets a coloured token (black for macchiato, blue for spriss, yellow for latte) which one takes down to the baristas out the back.

Two baristas pump out all the coffees, with a lady standing between them co-ordinating all the action. She takes your token and puts it next to a plate, but somehow manages to remember whose drink belongs to whom, and what order everyone came in.

Tomoca is tiny, a few bar tables with no chairs filling out most of the space. Along one wall is a coffee bean dispenser, under which are is a prized a wooden bench providing seating for the occasional lady that wanders in.

with Yoshi, a Japanese man we kept bumping into

There is one lonely old red formica table, accompanied by the only chair in the whole place. When all that is taken up, people spill out onto the footpath, along the benches and windows, finally extending into the aromatic roasting room at the back.

Now, let me reminisce about the coffee. Though we had plenty of good coffees throughout Ethiopia, Tomoca's coffee was clearly the standout winner. Rich, strong and full-bodied, there was always excellent crema and a perfectly smooth consistency. The amount of "buzz" was just right too.

I drank mostly macchiato, but on one occasion met an Ethiopian man who introduced me to "spriss", a drink made of half black tea, half espresso shot with a good dousing of sugar.

When served the coffee floats on top of the tea, but with a stir it turns an ominous colour which does not look inviting at all. One sip though, and I was hooked. The initial taste is that of coffee, but once it passes the after-taste is clearly that of tea. It is a drink with a light consistency, though somewhat syrupy from all the sugar.

Tomoca was "the" place to be, and we met our fair share of random strangers in it too. Almost all the locals we met there announced their allegiance to Tomoca, declaring it the bestest coffee in Addis, despite the existence of popular franchise chains like Yeshi and Kaldis. I, too, fell in love with Tomoca. And secretly promised myself that one day I shall return for another spriss.

A day out in Shanghai - Chongming Island, and some random water village

On a typically smoggy day in Shanghai we headed out to Chongming island, where there was reportedly a new "original" park. This sign at the front was promising.

Random photos from the park - the last is of a dried riverbed.

Lunch

 Traffic jam in a little water town

Really old school roadside eatery

View from the main bridge. The only touristy attraction in town is the "first teahouse" lined with red lanterns on the right

 How else would you get a TV home in a little water town?

 On a gondola ride

 Random shop

The stinkiest smelly tofu I'd had for a while, I could smell it on the water!

Dream: the one where Shanghai acquires a budget airport

In this dream I'm sitting around a square table with a glass top in our apartment in Shanghai, eating dinner with my dad and grandma. The rest of the decor looks similar but I don't quite recognise the table. Dad is trying to hurry grandma along as he usually does.

Hurry, eat faster! We have to go to the airport soon. He says, then asks me to check what time my flight is. I check the booking - it says I leave at 2300, and the clock shows 1930, so that leaves plenty of time to get to the airport. I tell grandma to slow down. She grumbles back that she can't eat any faster anyway.

But what airport is it leaving from? Dad asks. You know there are international flights from the domestic airport now, so you'd better check.

I look at the booking sheet again and it says I leave from Haima 海马 airport (as in seahorse), which I've never heard of (and is a rather strange name for a Chinese airport).

Oh no, that's the new budget terminal. You'd better hurry because you have to take a 1 hour flight from the main terminal to get to the budget terminal. Dad starts to panic and hurries grandma along even more.

I look at the clock and realise the time is probably not enough. I tell them I'll just go by myself and walk outside. The bomb shelter opposite our house (which in real life is now a nightclub) has been turned into a restaurant called 永康小厨 and I wonder why the restaurant is on the wrong street. On the street there are no vehicles, only a bunch of rickshaws pulled by topless men wearing silly headscarves like during the Qing dynasty.

I look around a bit more for a taxi then decide to ask a rickshaw man where I can get one. He says that our street has been turned into a "Cultural preservation street" and thus nothing motor is allowed within a 2 block radius. I start walking down the street and eventually see some cars on Urumqi Rd.

The taxi driver speeds to the airport and I dash into the terminal.

Hurry, hurry! You've almost missed the flight, don't worry about security! A lady in a red uniform waves me through and I run to the gate where my flight, MA005 is waiting. As I dash through the gate it closes behind me. Phew, a close one, I thought. I follow the ramp down and find myself on the tarmac with a display board looking much like a train station, showing each flight departing from a particular platform.

I go to the area where my flight is meant to be, and see a whole row of old white Ambassadors (like the taxis in India) on the tarmac in place of a plane.

It's too dangerous to fly by Visual Flight Rules tonight, but our IFR (Instrument flight rules) plane is hours away so you have to take one of these cars to the plane. 

I start looking for a spare seat amongst the Ambassadors but they seem all packed with people. As I frantically work my way up the row of cars, some of them start to leave and I am uncertain if I will find a seat.

Then I wake up.

Dream: crunchy chicken noodles

In this dream I'm trying to go to work but for some reason end up somewhere in Kensington heading back to my old flat in Kingsford.

Grace calls and asks if she can have a lift to RPA. I pick her up on the side of Anzac Parade near the Hunanese restaurant and we head back towards Newtown. I look at the clock and it's way past beginning of work time (almost 8am) and I try to rack my brain thinking of which unit I'm working in.

As we are driving along, Grace asks if we can stop to eat something. She's heard about some famous place serving crunchy chicken noodles, and for some reason I agree to stop and have some noodles before we go to work.

We sit down in a tiny restaurant with blue plastic tables and stools on the pavement. It looks like something from Vietnam but it's an Indonesian place. Our noodles arrive almost immediately and it is a pretty big bowl of what looks like mostly noodles with scattered fried shallots and chillies on top.

I mix the noodles in my bowl and take a big slurp. All these chicken bones enter my mouth and I spend the next painful minute spitting out the sharp jagged edges trying not to cut my mouth. I wonder silently in the dream how I managed to get all those bony fragments at once. The next slurp is not any better and I end up with sharp bony bits again. I look down at the bowl and it appears to be floating with nothing but bones.

What sort of place have you brought me to? I ask Grace.

I did say the noodles would be crunchy, just crunchy with bones!  She giggles as she says this and I wake up.