Cultural or cross country exchange.

...Building Castle In The Skies...

The great thing about staying in a traveller hostel is the cultural and language exchange between resident from different country. Just yesterday, I joined a a Scottish, two British guys and a Irish girl to a local Karaoke pub. That was a great night out and the whole pub atmosphere was fantastic! No one is conservative or shy and everyone is grabbing the mic. The Canada version of Karaoke is different from what I expected, instead of a TV hanging around the pub with MTV and lyrics there is only 1 TV infront of the singer, a random color background and lyrics...thats all. I was of cause caught by surprise when it was my turn to sing "We Are The Champions" by the Queen and literally miss out the beginning of the song. The crowd however was very very encouraging and lead the song for me.... very very great crowd out there. Sing my heart out for the rest of the song. But the wild and loud ones are of course the Ang Mos right there, they just have a no hold barred and very expressive stage presence... Ended the day with a United Nation rendation "Hey Jude". Angus from Scotland, Gareath from England and Riccardo from Singapore. Melissa from Ireland was pretty quiet for the night. Funny thing is the guys all gave me a wink when I decided to leave the pub earlier with Melissa...hmm...what were they thinking man.

Today, the Hostel kitchen is another place I have a great cross-country food culture exchange. My Korean friend, Sung Park, invited me to join him in the kitchen to make some Bim Bi Bab. Have my favourite Korean food so far but have not appreciate the art of Korean food preparation so this is my first try. Surprisingly, it was really easy to make Bim Bi Bab. First cook some Japanese rice, next pan fried an egg till the white solidify but the yolk is still watery. We don't have chicken so we fried some hotdog as replacement and boil carrots and mushroom for 20 secs. Prepared a big pot and place all the rice, hotdog (which can be any meat), carrot, mushroom and add in fresh clean spinach and finally topping it up with fried eggs. Add a bit of seseme oil and lastly the most important ingredient, the red sauce use on all Bim Bi Bab, "Go-chu-zhang" is added in. Just stir and mix all the stuff together like rojak and it BIM BI BAB!!! Home cooked style. Realise its a very very easy dish to made thus will be making it pretty frequently for lunch when I am back working in Texas. A bit of creativity, I could mix other ingredient into the BIM BI BAB and make my own Riccardo's version...

Than there was this Brazilian girl, a undergraduate of Bio-Medical and Neuro Sceince who offer us Cactus fruit. It look like a pear with pimples. Her name is "My-Tin" thats how I pronouce her name in my way, can't bother to learn how to spell it. Tasted cactus fruit the first time, it tasted like Kiwi with big hard seeds!!!! I was asking Mytin if we have to spit it out but she said just swallow it. Now I am just waiting to see what develop in my stomach. My Korean friend went to crush the seed with his teeth instead! It was pretty hilarious.

I came to learn how very valuable Singapore English education is to me now that I am in a foreign land surrounded by people from all over the world. Those many years of education from Kindergarden, Primary school and finally secondary school have bridged whatever communication gap with people around the world. Everyone here in Canada be it European, American, Canadian, Arabs and Asian speak English although not all of them are fluent with it. There are lots of Asian who came here specially to attend English lesson because it was not offer as a first language subject back in their country. People from Korea and Japan especially. We really have to appreciate our Singapore Education system that prepared us to speak to the world without a hitch. I am not trying to boost about Singapore education system but the aspect on learning English have truly been appreciated by me so far.

My Korean friend Sung was right about learning English, its just not enough to learn from classroom cause you are still going to speak back to your native tongue when you are out with friends and back home. The same goes to my work in Texas, surrounded by Singaporean guys and speaking chinese and singlish here and there... its still not gonna help in any improvement in language skill. Simply said, when you are totally surrounded by Ang Mo, you learn their language well, totally surrounded by Japanese, you speak good Japanese in few years, surround by Korean everyday, you will be fluent in Korean language. The same goes to Thai, Vietnamese, Spanish...almost any language! Its about mixing with the right company.

Casa Loma "House, On The Hill" Built in the 1911 and was never completed as the owner, a Military Leader, an Industrialist and a Philantropist went broke halfway through its construction. Eventually took over by the City Of Toronto as a result of his bad tax debt. Now its a Tourist attraction for you and me. Probably the only Castle within a City.