in durians vile

I didn't have anything official at the conference today, so we took a last day's outing in Singapore. Feeling vaguely redundant, we took the subway down to Chinatown. Sort of like going to the Disney Store in Disneyland?

But there is a Chinatown here, and it's bigger and more Chinese than the one in your town. The first thing I did, hungry for experience more than calories, was buy a small durian cake. In case you're unfamiliar with the infamous fruit, this is how Wiki describes it:

"The edible flesh emits a distinctive odour, strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact. Some people regard the durian as fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and offensive. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust, and has been described variously as almonds, rotten onions, turpentine and gym socks. The odour has led to the fruit's banishment from certain hotels and public transportation in southeast Asia."

To my nose the aroma, or odor, has two distinct components, one fruity and the other foul. The fruity one smells like honeydew melon; the foul one a "noble rot" like French hung fowl. Not pleasant but not repellent. The flavor, insofar as you can separate it from the smell, is sweet but not cloying, and more complex than most fruits. I like it, but I've never served it to guests!

The fruit-and-juice stand where I bought it smelled pretty awful; it probably wouldn't stay in business in Peoria. Or even Honolulu. It had plenty of customers here, though. (I wonder whether there's a genetic factor that predisposes one for or against the flavor, like cilantro.) I thought it was delicious.

Maybe there's a kind of controlled cognitive dissonance at work. I mean, I understand that aged bleu and Limburger cheese smell horrible out of context, but I would serve bleu, at least, to guests.

(We used to belong to a cheese-of-the-month club, and about half of them were a little too challenging for our Iowa City crowd. One, a chewy caramel monstrosity, was too much even for me.)

We window-shopped all over the place without intending to buy. I did fall prey to a tea shop, predictably. They had a kind of "yellow" tea, similar to but distinct from white tea. I remember having had it almost fifty years ago in Washington's Chinatown, where it was supposedly a rare treat. Googling, I find it's like green tea, but aged long enough to remove the "grassy" flavor component. Okay . . . I'll brew a pot when I get home, and report.

I also bought a couple of watercolor brushes, one soft and one stiff, nine bucks apiece after a little haggling. Perhaps too little, I always feel after I've paid.

Back in the hotel now. I'm sitting in the lounge with my beer and peanuts, and the place is starting to fill up with Anglo and European types, who look literary, some vaguely familiar. No doubt I'll find out tonight or tomorrow that I should have recognized half of them.

Joe