Food descriptions

Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, has a new building that will be open soon. It is designed such that all the classrooms are round (instead of square or rectangular in shape), to facilitate discussion among students and their lecturers. In fact, the students will go online to read the lecture on their own time. Class time is meant solely for discussion of the week's lesson.

While the building has yet to have an official name (as of March 2015), it has been nicknamed the "dimsum baskets" building (pictured above). If you have ever seen pictures of steaming hot dimsum (点心) being served in bamboo baskets stacked up, you will get the idea.

When the design of The Esplanade (pictured on top right) performing arts venue was first released, many criticised it, saying it was ugly. However, very soon, the description that became most popular (and has stuck since) was "the durian". Today, bus and taxi drivers may not know "Esplanade", but if you tell them "The Durian", they know exactly where that is. (To the uninformed, durian (pictured on bottom right) is a fruit with a hard, spiky shell. It "smells like hell but tastes like heaven".)

This got me thinking about Singaporeans' obsession with food. We are known to be a nation of foodies. While eating breakfast, we are discussing what to eat for lunch and dinner, where to go for the best dish, how fresh the ingredients are, what special spices or herbs go into the dish, etc, etc. When we visit an aquarium, we do not simply admire the beauty of the fish in terms of colour or shape, but rather wonder how the fish would taste when cooked with some special combination of spices. Needless to say, we like our food!

In short, we Singaporeans tend to view quite a few things around us with "food-coloured" lenses. In the fast-paced life that we lead, we all need something to give us a break and brighten our day.

Happy eating!