Better, Not Older - 31 Things I Did While I Was 31

 Better late than never, little Dear.

1. After many years and a few hiatuses, I completed my Honours BA in Communication - finally- with a 4.0 GPA and a minor in Dialogue.

2. I wrote a lot, and I was published in the Tyee, xoJane, the Under 35 Project, Huffington Post, The Vancouver Courier, Whistler Traveler and Vancouver is Awesome.

3. I was hired as a pro-bono Ethical Tourism Advisor by Next Generation Nepal after I read a book called Little Princes and it inspired me to do something about child trafficking in Nepal.

4. I told a story at Rain City Chronicles (the Vancouver version of the Moth) about accidentally moving into a crack house. (You can listen here - I'm the first storyteller of "Under the Influence.")

Oh, how I wish this was ironic. BUT IT REALLY ISN'T.

5. I saw Neil Diamond in concert with my mum and her pals - we're the "Oh, Neil!" girls. I am a Diamond Head - I love Neil, like, an unhealthy amount, and the concert nearly had me in tears.

6. I hosted couchsurfers - 6 in Vancouver and 5 in Kathmandu - and I feel more and more dialed into its international community of vagabonds, travelers and engaged citizens.

Interestingly, also what I do with men.

7. I marched in the Gay Pride Parade with the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association (VOKRA) for whom I have fostered kittens in the past. We won the People's Choice Award for best float, and only about half of the attendees thought we were furries. 

8. I spent one perfect day in Singapore visiting my friends Tanya and Peter. I took a Chinatown Walking Tour, ate some amazing chicken rice, visited a hawker centre for frogs legs, char kway teow and wontons, drank fresh beers and won a pub quiz at a huge brewery pub at Clarke Quay. Whew!

9. I spent the next (perfect) day in Kuala Lumpur, taking a food tour, going to see the Petronas Towers and spending an evening alone on a verandah in a thunder storm, listening to music, writing and drinking Tiger Beer.

10. I stored my belongings, said some difficult goodbyes, made some hard choices about my beloved cats and moved to Kathmandu for 7 months.

11. I took the one-month Introduction to Buddhism course at Kopan Monastery, followed by the one week silent Lam Rim retreat.

Me and Ani Drolma moments after my refuge ceremony. I became "Thubten Tsultrim."

12. I formally took refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and officially became a Buddhist.

13. I applied to University College of London and York, and was accepted to both! I accepted UCL's offer to do my MA in Cultural Heritage Studies.

14. I consumed entrails on the streets of Bangkok on Christmas morning with my girl Jess and spent Christmas Dinner in Columbo eating gluttonous amounts of crab with my Mum and Tim.

15. I took a cooking class and learned to make rice n' curry, pol sambol and egg hoppers in Galle, Sri Lanka.

16. I spent New Year's Eve 2013 on a stunning beach in Tangalla, Sri Lanka with my Mum, Tim, Jess and a bartender who looked like Bruno Mars.

17. I began volunteering at the Kopan Dog Rescue and fell deeply, madly in love with the dogs there. 

The next hill over is called  Pubic Mound.

18. I trekked through the Annapurnas in a snow storm with my pal Vilija. Our Poon Hill trek was stunningly beautiful - and incredibly treacherous due to a freak storm that meant we had to descend the steep mountain trails by sliding on our bums/crawling on our hands and knees. 

19. I began Nepali lessons and learned how to speak ali ali (a little bit) of Nepali. Ramro!

20. I purchased my first sari and wore it to a glamourous birthday event.

21. I booked a 9 day vacation to Thailand with my gal Jess (again - she's my soul mate) and learned how to dive on Koh Tao. I am now officially SSI certified to scuba dive anywhere in the world.

Two of the many good friends I made this year, Cass and Jess.

22. I added over 100 new friends on Facebook, which means I met over 100 awesome new people who have added richness, humour, art, compassion, wisdom and sass to my life.

23. I discovered (much) younger men and realized that age really doesn't matter when two people have a lot in common. I also heard, "you look so good for your age!" quite often this year, to which I replied, "hunty, this is what 31 looks like!"

24. I had a blast getting covered in coloured powder on Holi -  and then had less of a blast when a gang of teenaged boys surrounded me and a friend and groped us. This is common in Nepal, and made me feel vulnerable and ashamed. It was my first sexual assault, and it made me have even more compassion for victims of sexual violence.

25. I learned to love dal bhat, the Nepali national dish that consists of a mountain of rice, lentil soup, vegetable curry and spicy pickle. A bad dal bhat is bland, mushy and boring, but a good one is yummy comfort food. (But to be honest, I ate more pho than anything.)

26. I fell into a giant open sewer hole and was rescued by the Nepali army.

I'm saying, "have you ever tried to help, but accidentally made things a whole lot worse?"

27. I wrote and gave a Pecha Kucha presentation on my research into orphanage voluntourism in Nepal at the 9th Kathmandu Pecha Kucha Night, and I hope to give a similar presentation in London and Vancouver.

28. I co-wrote and presented a pub quiz (that benefits the Umbrella Foundation) at Pub Maya in Thamel. My rounds included questions on Lynch, Bowie, Joy Division, Rocky Horror, Voodoo, Wayne's World, Edith Piaf and Tom Waits.

29. I got a tattoo of a Matryoshka doll in honour of my grandmother. Thar's right: I got a tattoo of a Ukrainian stacking doll by a Swiss artist in Nepal. 

30. I learned to open a beer with any available implement. Physics confuses me, but I finally met a boy who taught me the basic principles of levers, so look out science! You're my bitch now.

31. Finally, on my last day of 31 I learned to ride a motorcycle at Hearts and Tears Motorcycle Club in Pokhara. I was surrounded by great teachers, fun friends and a boy who is riding his bike from here back to the UK. At long last, I'll actually be able to put the word "biker" before "babe"(or "bitch").

That's all, pals. Now to get started on a list of 32 equally amazing things for this coming year: bungy jumping, getting back on my skateboard, surf lessons, Greek island sailing, warehouse parties, finding a flat in Brixton and a lot of writing.

xoxoVioletDear

Hey. 32. Bring it. This goth bitch is going to OWN you.

I See Dead Things: A Walk Through Singapore's Chinatown

When I was in Singapore recently I took a walking tour through Chinatown and learned some wonderful - and morbid - history about the neighbourhood. See, as much as I loved being a walking tour guide, I love taking walking tours even more.

I am an easy sell. I have always credited my excellent sales skills to the fact that I myself am so easily excited by the prospect of being sold to. This is similar to the way I feel about tour guiding. As a seasoned tour guide myself, people expect me to hold fellow guides to an impossibly high standard and lampoon them when their storytelling skills are not up to par, but au contraire. As long as a guide has a reasonably good grasp on what they are talking about, I am a dream guest. I smile and nod and my eyes glitter with happy tears at the mere mention of architecture, events of historical significance and unique cultural quirks. I ask questions. I laugh on cue. I tip.  

Joo-Ling was a great guide, a retiree she was bursting with facts and quirks about the city state that she clearly loves. She led me on a two and a half hour tour of information about a neighbourhood that parallels the Chinatown in Vancouver in so many interesting ways.

Now, I spent a few hours last night explaining to you how I have come to terms with my morbid side (just call me Wednesday Adams, y’all) and I think that this deep introspection was inadvertently triggered by Joo-Ling. And she has no idea.

We were standing inside of Confucian/Taoist/Buddhist temple and she was explaining the Singaporean custom of combining these normally separate religions (“Never can have too much good luck!”) when she began talking about some of the darker emblems and talisman contained within the temple walls. “See, you know yin and yang symbol? You see how there is always hope, right? Inside the darkest times, there is always a little bit of light. But, and even in the best times, you have to remember that there are negative things too, otherwise you become a jerk!”

“You can’t have the good without the bad. They always go together, at list a little bit. And the little bit of black in the white side of the yin yang symbol makes the good things even sweeter.”

Now you see where my head was at when I wrote this.
 

*****

We wound our way through streets lined with Chinese shop houses, up a tamarind shaded hill and then back down into hectic central Chinatown. After visiting a traditional apothecary, we headed right down a street referred to as the Street of the Dead. Immediately my inner goth girl perked up, and I giggled to myself. This was a perfect segue from the Taoist philosophy (lite) that Joo-Ling had been espousing inside the temple. I think it helped to click that I AM GENUINELY INTERESTED IN WEIRD THINGS, and that that is actually a positive part of who I am and not just a facet of arrested development. Consequently, a lane called the Street of the Dead was like tourism crack to me.

Until the 1960s, “death houses,” places where the poor literally came to die (like the ones pictured above), were big business on Sago Street. When Singapore went through a massive sanitization campaign the death houses were outlawed but a whole new death industry sprung to life and cashed in on the already morbid reputation of the area.

To illustrate this, one of our next stops was a store selling funerary supplies. Most Chinese Singaporeans are cremated, and so this store doesn’t do a swift trade in coffins and shrouds but rather joss sticks and paper effigies.

 

Back in ancient times, rich and powerful men would plan their burials in elaborate terms – which often included the burial of slaves, armies and material goods to keep them safe and happy in the afterlife.  Eventually, this practice was abandoned in favour of effigies (Terra Cotta Warriors, anyone?) These days no one is really in need of a battalion of soldiers as much as an iPad, ammiright?

This is a place where Singapore’s consumer culture comes crashing into ancient custom, and it all happens in a very matter of fact way.  Death is not something we should avoid and pretend doesn’t exist – it is an inevitable part of life. And if you have Blackberry in the afterlife, a pretty fun one at that.

Next time you are in Singapore, I highly recommend taking a walking tour. You just never know what you will discover about the city – and about yourself.

Turbulence Over the Pacific

Me and my neck pillow, about to board in Vancouver

I left. Throughout my going-away party (which was lovely, thank you) and the final day of packing mayhem and even as I said goodbye to some people to whom it was really hard to say goodbye (hey artist boy, I’m looking at you), I had doubts. Doubts that I would actually do it. But I left. I am gone.

Well I’m kind of in limbo, actually. I am on an airplane. I will actually post this from the safe and cozy confines of the spare bedroom at my friend Tanya’s home in Singapore, but as I write this I am seated in seat 51A of Air Canada flight 7 from YVR to HKG. I have less than an hour in Hong Kong – not enough time for dim sum – and then onwards to the town I once dubbed “The Big Uneasy.”

Once I land at SIN I have been instructed to pick up a bottle of JB Blended Scotch for Tanya and her man Peter – spirits are four times more expensive in Singapore than in Canada, and her welcome email included the lines, “If you exit the passengers-only area without a duty- free bag, we will not know you. In fact, we may even alert security that you’re a known chewing gum smuggler.” I will gladly oblige. And maybe even sneak a nip for myself. Violet Dear loves her vodka, yes – but she also loves her scotch. 

Maps. They don't love you like I love you.

I’m getting ahead of myself with thoughts of scotch. Let’s not forget that presently I am on hour nine of a thirteen hour flight, and I am starting to get into the “bored-child” stage of long distance travel. I want to whine and stamp my feet and pout. I’m listening to Tom Waits. I have watched three movies (The Muppets, Kill Bill 1 and The Dark Knight Rises). I have eaten two terrible meals and drank two cokes. I read the latest Vanity Fair and the new Chuck Pahlaniuk (why did I bother?). Enough already.

These next three days are a kind of limbo in and of themselves. A tropical vacation before the real work begins – the dreaded month of silence and meditation. I am scared of Kopan monastery in a nerve-wracking way, in the same way that the anticipation of a first kiss can tangle your stomach and play games with your head. I know that it is going to be wonderful and rewarding and meaningful, but the lead up is a sort of torture. A strange and scary torture.

I described this to my Dharma teacher last week and she smiled her serene 80 year-old Buddhist smile and said, “well, that’s because you like to be in control. You will need to give up some of that control when you walk through the gates of the monastery.” She’s right.

Right now the plane is going through patch after patch of turbulence. It matches my mood and my Tom Waits-fuelled dreams of scotch. I have always liked turbulence, which my friends and family find strange (sister, I wish that was the only thing they found strange) but I find it comforting. Maybe it has to do with the fact that all control over my situation is completely and forcibly removed from my hands when the aircraft shudders and shakes – there is literally nothing I can do but close my eyes and snuggle into my seat and ride it out. I find it calming.

Shit, did I just accidentally write my way into some kind of metaphorical lesson? I swear that it happened by accident, but it seems fortuitous and I’ll take it where I can get it. So listen here, see: the only way I am going to enjoy the next three days is if I take a deep breath and snuggle into the experience and stop trying to control shit and jump ahead into the future, whether that future is as near as Thursday when I check into Kopan or June 15^th when I return to Vancouver. Or, for that matter, three hours from now when I get off of this fucking plane.

So shut up, Dear. Flag a flight attendant, have a scotch and get comfortable. Enjoy the bumps. Afterall, you can’t control them – and that is fucking wonderful.

Singapore - The Ultimate Foodie Mecca

Big bulging greedy crab eatin' eyes.

Singapore. A country that is a city. A big, shiny, glossy fancy-pantsy city filled with luxurious shopping complexes that stretch for kilometres, litter-less streets and happy middle class consumers hussling by with Coach and Gucci shopping bags.

They are hurrying because they are hungry.

Singaporeans are well known for their love of food - more food than we can imagine. My first trip to the Big Uneasy was with work 18 months ago and I will be honest - I did not love it. I was put off by the modernity (compared with Vietnam, where I had just come from) and the oft-twee Disneyland atmosphere. But this time I got it - I understood Singapore. Because all I did was eat.

Hawker stalls, Sushi restaurants, food courts (a popular place to eat in S'pore- not like our atrocities of fast food at all) and dim sum - I ran the gamut and ate my face off. I saw Chinese people eating South Indian idlis, South Indians eating pig intestine soup, Malays eating pizza and everyone - and I mean everyone eating Hainanese chicken rice - the national dish. Unlike most places in Asia, food knows no race and has no cultural divide here.

Singaporeans are true foodies. I can get behind that - man, can I ever! I was so inspired by all of this edible harmony that I decided to document every meal, snack and alcohlic bevvie that I consumed over a 36 hour period. I have never been happier.

Salty, soft, squishy heaven.

Delicious, squishy salmon sashimi at a local sushi place near City Hall. While it wasn't cheap it rivalled Vancouver's freshness and authenticity - I also had a spicy tuna handcone, an ebi tempura roll and a 2 pieces of salmon nigiri. After a year away from my true love Raw Fish-san, (other than our brief tryst in Vancouver) I could little more than breathe a sigh of happiness and order another handcone.

One of their slogans? "If you want a skinny latte, drink half a glass."

Ya Kun Kaya Toast is a famous chain across Singapore - started by a little old man in 1926 (the year my granny and grandpa were both born!) They serve traditional coffees, runny softboiled eggs (like, barely cooked at all - they hold the eggs near the hot water) and kaya toast: thin slices of brown bread slathered with coconut egg jam and a thick cold slice of margerine. Although it sounds apalling, it was kind of nice- like cinnamon toast. It, like every other restaurant in Singapore, was packed.

Salty and crunchy with a bouncy shrimp in the middle. I do love shramp....

Oh sweet jesus - this was delicious. You may remember one of my previous experience with dimsum in Hong Kong - this was almost as good. Pictured above is shrimp wrapped in crispy beancurd skin, deepfried (like all good food is.) We also had some steamed shrimp dumplings and cokes served in ice cold tin cups. I am now convinced that that is the way god intended coca cola to be imbibed, so Atlanta you'd better listen up....

Pineapple, Chambord and vodka - was this created especially for Violet Dear?

A lurvely French martini at the Swissotel's 70th floor bar - we had a beautiful 360 view of all of Singapore with lightning as its decoration. The hotel was designed by I.M. Pei ( you know, the architect that Lisa Simpson references....) and it is a modernist's dream. The drinks, though exorbitantly priced, were wonderful - I recommend heading here for happy hour for a nice splurge.

Skinny jeans? Not for long, cabrones.

Choose. Your. Own. Tempura. Bar. Somebody open this in Vancouver please, so that I can always have 3 mushrooms, 2 asparagus, 1 onion chunk, 1 potato and 3 green beans instead of lame squash and pithy yam. The result was good - nice and crispy with light oil, tasty batter and perfectly cooked veggies.

Cheese. Cheese. Cheese. Ohmigod. Cheese.

How much money can a person spend on cheese in Singapore? Well, let's just say too much. One stinky stinky blue, one slithery creamy brie and one peppery gouda with a Scottish red cheddar for good measure. All of that slathered on fresh rosemary focaccia. Am I even still in Asia?

Next time, S'pore. No wait - for this price probably never. I'd rather buy expensive make-up and food.

This one is a bit of a cheat - I didn't actually have a drink here. The Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel is where the Singapore Sling was invented, and at this colonial landmark you can still sip a cherry brandied delight - for 35 Canadian dollars. I'm in Asia - that drink had better come with a sexual favour! We passed, even though it meant missing out on drinking history....

Fish Biscuit.

I posted this photo in my facebook photo album, and tons of people reacted with "ewww!" and "wtf?" I realize that I forgot to mention that these have no fish in them whatsoever. These are Japanese waffles, stuffed with gooey dobs of sweet filling - I played it a bit safe and passed over durian for chocolate. It was a perfect little sugary snack - the waffle soft and spongey and the chocolate warm. I have since been informed that we have these in Vancouver - I am there.

Looka likea styrofoam, tastea likea heaven.

Seemingly every hawker stall in Singapore has a newspaper clipping enlarged and posted on their kiosk exclaiming that they are the best purveyor of blank in the city. This lady is apparently the queen of these little cakes stuffed with toasted coconut. I tried one, and I won't argue - yummy.

We waited in line for these for 15 minutes when no other stall had any business. That's how you know it's that good.

Here is another example of a famous hawker dish, served from the stall that has been deemed number 1 in Singapore by Makansutra, the street food guide. Soupy fried noodles with shrimp and squid, served in the husk of a betel tree (aficionados say that the husk gives them a special bitter flavour.) The broth was light and fishy (in a good way) and the prawns steamed perfectly atop two kinds of Chinese noodle. Bean sprouts rounded it out to add some crunch and freshness - win.

It was like a seafood Texas Chainsaw Massacre up in thar.....

Mastercrab - they didn't eff around when it came to naming their restaurant, now did they? This is in a sort of fancy outdoor foodcourt across the street from where our friend Tanya and her partner Peter live - they see fancy cars pull up here for some crab all the time, and so we decided to forgo a more swanky seafood place (I did that last time anyway, on Singapore Airline's dime.)

You guys know I like crab, right?

I have a bad habit of anthropomorphizing things, and well - doesn't this guy look he's about to take a bow? (He deserves one!)

Every city has its famous food - Chicago deep dish pizza, New York cheesecake, Montreal Poutine - I can go on. But none is so decadent, so exciting and so...well, crabby as Singapore Chili Crab. First created forty years ago, the half-cracked crab is served swimming in a savory mix of tomato, chilies and egg. It was amazing - I was covered in the thick succulent sauce from elbow to ear, sweating from the spice and ignoring my rice as per usual. It turns out they are the masters at crab.

It's the size of mah head!

I love pub quizzes, and it turns out that there is a great one right near Tanya and Peter's place. This was my first Hoegarden in Asia, and even though it was expensive (everything is in S'pore) I was in Heaven. This is like a private bucket of beer - I had to use two hands and even then it was touch and go....

I need-a dose-a this.... (groan)

If you have never eaten a South Indian dosa you are not my kind of person (I kid. Maybe you are anyway - but you should eat a dosa man, fast!) Dosas are a thin bubbly lentil pancake (sort of like crispy Ethiopian injera bread) filled with a masala potato mixture and then dipped (using only your right hand!) into a choice of runny sauces called sambars. Clockwise these were a really onion-y curry, shredded coconut sauce and a tomato-y mix that tasted like butter chicken (without the chicken, of course.) This is traditionally eaten for breakfast, but I love them anytime. This stall is also highly ranked by Makansutra.

Mooncakes. They sure are....special? Different?

Don't these look like they would taste sooo good and perfect - like Hello Kitty herself crafted them with her paws? Well, they don't. Mooncakes are a once-a-year treat served during the Chinese Lantern Festival - the traditional version is stuffed with lotus paste and duck egg yolk. These days you can also get fruit filled versions, and so we tried a Lotus (had to taste the original) a mango, a cranberry and a green tea. They tasted like raw floury dough and extremely sweet congealed jam. But they sure are cute!

My god I deserve a break today.

At the airport. I won't lie. I won't be ashamed. McDonald's fries are a secret vice. We all have at least one (or twenty, if you are Violet Dear.)

So, should you visit Singapore for the architecture, the pre-fab tourist attractions and the shopping? Hell no. Go and eat. Like, really really EAT.

You won't be disappointed...