Singapore Adventure

Monday, October 31, 2005

Close Your Eyes
by venitha

We're home from Penang, but I'm having trouble removing my lazy vacationer costume to expose the intrepid blogger underneath. Where, oh where, is my suitably spooky Hallowe'en post? Along with mini Snickers bars, trick-or-treaters, and daylight savings time, it is nowhere to be found. So instead, I give you...

Eyeballs.

Hallowe'en is not popularly celebrated in Singapore, but if it were, children's makeshift haunted houses fabricated in dark, cobwebbed basements would be significantly different. For one thing, most Singaporean children don't have basements, and for another, a bowl of peeled grapes masquerading as eyeballs would never be considered gross enough to be worthy of sticking your blindfolded friends' hands into: many Singaporeans frequently eat eyeballs.

Thankfully, these belong to fish and not humans, but neither Jim, Jazz, nor I was willing to eat - or touch, for that matter - the eyeballs served up to us in this tasty fishhead curry. I hate haunted houses, so I'm considering it quite an achievement that I had the eyeballs on my plate. How scary is that?

venitha