The First Post

Dear all,

I wanted the first photo post of this blog to be awesome and amazing, so...

I got one off the internet. (This is courtesy of http://www.qualitytravel.it/qualitynews/gifs/tanzania.jpg. Basically first thing cool that came off a "Tanzania" search on Google Images.)

I'm not a good blog writer because i tend to ramble, and i'm not very witty. So you're going to have to bear with me..and my train of thought and its random stops. (I sometimes get excited and meander to my original destination.. as evidenced by current sentence.)

And hopefully when the full swing of things happen, aka when the others arrive and we go travelling and sight-seeing, they (or WE as a collective group!!.. which will be a mess and hilarious, methinks, but then i guess there's a reason why we've been friends for almost 15 years.. (!!!) i think they're pretty hilarious and they basically make me smile.. and laugh.. a lot.) well as i was saying, they/we will take turns to write and post!

Highlights since arrival include:

1. Me forgetting to tell rebec (my gracious host, and nick, her husband, another gracious host) that i was leaving/arriving (i did(!) send her an email with my flight itinerary.. about 2 months ago though) such that when she was at the airport, seeing the airplane land in the airport, she remarked "i hope wanlin's on that plane."

...and i was! phew!

2. Food in Tanzania:

For breakfast, rebec offered to make eggs and bacon. (This was written specially for you B. I said no!!)

We just had coffee instead. (Sitting on her roof deck, looking out into the sea, with the sea breeze blowing..)

For lunch, rebec suggested Subway. (yes, the sandwich place.)

After I showed her my true feelings,

she agreed for us to eat samosas and parathas instead.

[They were samosas=spring-roll-like-skin-wrapped onions and meat (sweeter than the indian versions i've had, and more crispy than those wrapped in dough), meat parathas (salty minced meat wrapped by a panfried-flat-pita-like bread), and egg parathas (which we never got to because we were greased out towards the end, and is now sitting in the fridge, but basically an egg and paratha rolled up together).]

Although after my below expression, she wasn't sure if that was the right choice. A little too.. "happy" she said. (ok, to be fully honest, the word she used was "crazy"/ siao.)

For dinner, we ate... CHINESE. (yes, rachel chang, sister of rebecca chang, predicted it right.)

We had hot pot, and I have to say, it was at least a Tanzanian-styled Chinese Hot Pot.

Highlights of dinner include (if you have not yet guessed, "Highlights" will be a common theme):

#A. The concoction that made this Tanzanian Hot Pot:

Add 1. peanut "butter" (or at least that's what nick and rebec called it.. i think its more like peanut sauce.. or ground peanuts with MSG),

2. chopped garlic in oil

(which looked a bit like tao sua.. and nick wanted rebec to say "Yes its tao sua!" so that i would eat a large bite of it) (for those who don't know what tao sua looks like, it looks like this..

(that is, minus the you tiao/fried crueller pieces and coconut milk topping, that is)

except its a dessert and tastyyyyy. not that i don't think garlic in oil is tasty. it is. just not in the same way.)

and 3. scallions and parsely (in that order)

to your bowl and mix it up.

This will be your dipping sauce for everything you eat later. I have to say (esp since they called it "peanut butter" at first.. making me think it'd be sweet tasting) I was a large skeptic (-->i.e. if i could raise one eyebrow i would've done so for 5 mins.--> probably a good thing i can't. eyebrow muscles would've been sore.) but upon test tasting the concoction i have to say it was very tasty, esp with the hot pot. I contend that the sole reason is due to the MSG. what doesn't taste good with MSG?! I even dipped the plain mantou (chinese bread) into it and it tasted yumzz.

#B. Rebec--thanks to my presence and questions about the things we were eating--learnt that:

the "beef" had always been mutton (although everyone perpetuated her confusion by calling it beef),

that the "pig stomach" was really cow stomach (although as someone who grew up in singapore, HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW ITS PIG STOMACH?!.. she also didn't remember what pig stomach looked like despite chin's and my very apt descriptions such as "..they are like layers of light grey things.. yes! like those that you eat in kway chup! no, not the intestines! intestines are tube shaped!...") (For purposes of comparison, here is how cow stomach looks like.. although i have to say it doesn't really look like what we ate yesterday.. hmm.. what DID we eat yesterday? INterestinggg...)

and that the "noodles" have always been big pieces of seaweed.

#C. Revelation that Rebec and I can't multitask.

This manifested itself in me first by, I was trying to tell a simple story while trying to fish out my mutton in the hot pot. My story kept pausing everytime my mutton fell out of my slotted spoon. My mutton kept falling out everytime i tried to restart the story. Finally they were like, STOP MULTITASKING!

Then it manifested itself in Rebec by, she was also trying to tell a simple story while fishing out some foods for me. Much as i appreciated the act, i also didn't want any broth and so asked her to use the slotted spoon, instead of the soup ladle she was using. 3 TIMES. REPEATEDLY. but she kept on using the ladle, completely ignoring me! (and you know i'm not a softspoken person so there was no chance that she didn't hear me.) Finally the 3 of us were like, stop talking/multitasking!! and I scooped the food out myself with a slotted spoon.

#D. I may have gotten MSG overdose from hot pot broth and the peanut sauce.

!!!! for those who know me in the US as a proponent and addict of MSG (one of the reasons why i LOVE chex mix) this must come as a surprise aka shock aka horror. i know, i didn't know this day would come. but i am slightly wary of MSG right now..

3. I got bitten by a mosquito and have not died yet. HOORAY! (i refused to pay US$325 for anti-malaria pills that my insurance did not cover). At least its not the super dangerous rapid-kill type of malaria? (Qihui was such a downer and said, but the bacteria takes a while to multiply in your body..)

4. This morning we took a "shortcut" to the steel pipe factory/office.. and the potholes on this short cut... were like the size of tiny planets. ok, no i take it back, tiny planets would be bigger perhaps but have a more gentle curvature and hence would not be as bumpy a ride. They had the circumference of a 1 metre yoga ball.. and hence like 0.5 m deep!

On the way, a man pushing his bike with a 1 m wide basket perched on the back of his bike filled (or rather CRAMMED) with live chickens overtook our car, which was stuck in traffic. Alas, I was too slow to get my camera out to take a photo. And no, we never overtook him.

More pictures (that are not sourced from the internet) to come, I hope.

For now, i need to get back to work (-ing on my essays.. so not exciting).

Yours truly,

W.

PS. Rebec said that she hopes that our adventures/this blog lives up to its great title. Or else this blog would be very boring.