More Terrible!!! by venitha

Yesterday I walked down my local Cold Storage's beverage aisle and was struck anew that, in Singapore, one is almost always spoilt for choice. Desserts, of course, are excepted, but the drink selection is truly amazing.

The assortment of canned beverages we stocked for our party about a million years ago now (yes, I actually wrote them down, anal freak intrepid blogger that I am): lime juice drink, soursop juice drink, longan drink, mango juice drink, pineapple drink, Sprite, Coke, Vanilla Coke, Coke Light (aka Diet Coke), chrysanthemum tea, barley drink, soya bean drink, Kickapoo Joy Juice, aloe vera juice, grapefruit juice, guava juice. The only one that's still in our fridge today is the aloe vera juice. It has floaters. No, thank you. We couldn't even trick Matthew into drinking it.

My canned and bottled beverage of choice in Asia is soya bean, which I would call soy milk in the US. It's probably sacrilege for a girl from Wisconsin to like it, but I do. Slightly sweet, it's usually served cold with a cup of ice. It's also really good hot, which is how I buy it in the work cafeteria many mornings.

Beverage containers are frequently labelled with Chinese and Malay and English and a usually* helpful picture. While this hasn't resulted in a sudden miraculous ability to read Chinese, it has improved our fruit vocabulary and has perhaps even taught us some slang. A recent can of Kacang Soya (Soya Bean) shouted Rasa baru, lebih hebat!!! According to one of our dictionaries, this translates literally as New taste, more terrible!!!

I still thought it was pretty good.

venitha
* I write usually because I have a complaint to register with the beverage can artists' union regarding the cruelty of the similarity between the depiction of my beloved soya bean and that of the alarming peanut soup in a can available in Taipei. Talk about floaters! Soya bean, in spite of the above helpful picture, is completely floater-free.