Halloween, Singapore Style

Happy Halloween, everyone!  Last night I headed out with some friends to celebrate Halloween at Clarke Quay, a popular party spot that is right on the banks of the Singapore River.  The area is full of clubs, bars, and restaurants, but on Halloween the whole area was pretty much packed with people.  I decided on a very Singaporean costume: the durian, king of fruits:

I think that only one person was able to guess my costume over the course of the night, but most people were pretty amused once I explained it to them.  Even if they didn't realize what my costume was, there were still plenty of people who wanted to take pictures with me.  Seriously, my friends and I couldn't walk 10 feet without someone stopping and asking to take a picture with us.  I think that part of this was that most Singaporeans don't get very dressed up for Halloween - a lot of people were there just as spectators.  Also, Asians just seem to really like taking pictures.  (Especially pictures with blond people.  Anytime I go anywhere touristy in Singapore, I end up having to take pictures with a bunch of random people.  It reminds me of how, as a kid at Disneyland, there were tons of Asian people who wanted to take pictures of my brother and me.)  There were a couple people with good costumes, my favorite being a girl dressed up as a Rubiks Cube.  At one point in the night, one of my Singaporean friend and I somehow wandered into a party for a bunch of Singaporean TV/radio personalities and local celebrities.  I didn't realize this until later, when my friend told me so, and then I understood why she had been so excited (I was excited because there was free food and drinks).

Today, I went to an exhibit on the Philippines at the Asian Civilizations Museum.  The Philippines is somewhat different from the rest of Southeast Asia because of the strong Spanish influences, especially in terms of religion - 80% of the population is Roman Catholic.  The exhibit traced the history of the Philippines from its precolonial roots, through the eras of Spanish and American rule, up to the People's Power movement in the 1980s.  What I thought was most interesting was seeing how the Spanish priests mixed indigenous religions with Catholicism to make Christianity more palatable to the natives.  The exhibit had an extensive display of religious icons, most of which were made by Chinese artisans.  This added another cultural influence into the mixture: the icons showed a mix of Christian and indigenous religious symbols, rendered in a Chinese style.  Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed.  However, I did stumble onto a display of Hindu "small gods" on my way out:

Apparently, the Hindu gods most people are familiar with, such as Shiva, Ganesha, Kali, etc, are known as the "large gods".  These are the gods that have big statues in the temples and lots of legends about them.  However, there are also all sorts of minor gods called the "small gods" that are in charge of daily life kind of stuff.  People would normally have these kinds of statues in their homes and would set up small alters on which to place offerings.

Speaking of Hindu temples, last night, before heading out for Halloween, my friends and I went to a really cool restaurant called Annalakshmi.  The restaurant is run by a Hindu temple called the Temple of Fine Arts.  The Temple of Fine Arts puts on all sorts of music and dance performances, as well as running this restaurant.  The catch is that for all of their performances, as well as the meals at the restaurant, there are no set prices, you just pay what you think it was worth.  The food was really good and all the people working at the restaurant are volunteers who genuinely want to be there.  An interesting concept, and a really nice place overall.

Now I am off to make a spectacularly delicious sandwich.  If I had to pick one food item from home that I miss the most, it would be delicious sandwiches.  The lunchmeat situation here is quite dire - the Singaporean grocery stores only have various kinds of weird looking meat called things like "chicken ham" and "beef ham".  The cheese situation is just as bad: most stores only sell the rubbery pre-sliced "processed American cheese food" stuff.  So, today, I went to Carrefour (French Walmart, but much classier because it's French) and bought some delicious roasted turkey and gouda cheese.  Mmm I am so excited for this!

Update: That sandwich was AWESOME!