Another unique Singapore invention that we take for granted.
http://mothership.sg/2017/06/coffee-in-plastic-bag-apparently-weird-as-hell-to-people-not-from-spore/
On a related note :
The excitement of moving to a foreign country can quickly fade
as what was strange becomes mundane, what was surprising becomes
routine, as your senses settle in to a new life. But remembering
that magic of the first impressions helps me to appreciate what it
is to live in the tropics. The sounds of Singapore are so evocative
and one of the first things that strike - or wake - you. The first
was the cicadas. The high-pitched crescendo of one of these little
fellas seemed almost comical. How could it make so much noise? It
sounded like it was going to explode from the effort. I wonder at
how it has become a background sound although I am still trying to
spot one of these noisemakers. The next sound was the 5am wake-up
call from what I referred to as a 'whohoo bird' - I now know,
thanks to my visiting parents' curiosity, that this is a koel. I
started a war with this unwelcome alarm when I threw a tennis ball
in the rough direction of its perch. I feel it decided to strike
back when I was on Skype with my family with the window open, and
every time I started to speak, this bird began a series of
'whohoos' - a cause for much hilarity for those on the other end of
the call. The result - I am out of tennis balls but I can now sleep
through the koel's calls. Then there is the low buzz of enormous
carpenter bees. These big black monsters will send me skittering
for cover - give me snakes or spiders, but my room is filled with
bees. In my first few weeks here, a horrified taxi driver looked on
as I jettisoned my laptop onto the concrete pavement because one of
these beasts did a fly-by. The chirp of geckos took a while to
place. Falling asleep I would hear this chattering noise and it
took a few months to figure out that geckos, not curtain dwelling
bats or birds, were the origin. Then there are the frogs (or toads)
which use the drains as amplifiers for their midnight
conversations. Not all sounds are from nature, however. Ceaseless
construction work puts paid to many weekend lie-ins, and always in
the background, there is a low roar of the city, like a
never-breaking wave. But unlike other cities I have lived in, it is
not punctuated by sirens from emergency services or the toots of
impatient horns. The trees at first sight are gigantic compared to
my native temperate England. From the rain trees which line the
roads to the crazy mess of banyan trees, they are stunning. My
favourites are covered in a beard of grass or the plain weird
cannon ball trees with flowers as big as your face and trunks
bobbled with cannon-ball shaped fruits. One of the major smells of
Singapore was at first a mystery. I couldn't figure out what the
strange smell was in supermarkets until I realised it was the
packages of custard-coloured segments of durian. Mangos and
pineapples have a sweeter flavour here than those shipped in
containers to Britain. My taste buds struggled to place the
rambutan, mangosteen, chiku, dragon fruit and jackfruit sold at the
super convenient fruit stalls - another difference from home.
Coming from a country with a great tea-drinking tradition, I still
find it strange to see take-away plastic bags filled with the
beverage. The first thunderstorm I experienced in the Central
Business District was electric. I yelped at the sound of the sky
falling down as the wind tore my umbrella inside out and caught up
my skirt exposing my thankfully comprehensive underwear to
unsuspecting passers- by. I ducked at the sight of forked lightning
and learnt never to leave home without an umbrella even if the sky
is blue. After nearly three years here, senses can be dulled to
what was once so exotic. But sometimes when the whohoo bird gets
going just as the thunder cracks overhead and the air is thick
enough to taste, I can feel those first days in Singapore once
more. The writer, who is a Straits Times reporter, is from
Britain. She has lived here for almost three years.
