UDON stands for...

Ask anyone what there is to do in Singapore, and 99 percent of them will say eat and shop. The other 1 percent is the occasional bitter cabbie who'll say: "Singapore is the most boring city in the world. Same damn shit every day." To be honest, though, when the food's as good (and cheap!) as it is here, it's hard not to focus on its merits. I mean, I know you can find Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Indian food on the same street in New York City, but when a big meal costs SGD$3 ($4 for the expensive variety, or about US $2-$3) NY can sit down and suck its multicultural thumb.

Pineapple rice. Pad thai. Japanese curry. Teriyaki. Yaki udon. The udon!

I love udon -- my love is kind of like this poster at Uma Uma, a Japanese restaurant downtown that has a conveyor belt of sushi. Little disturbed by the "never eat another again" line, though. Another what/who?

I'm also amazed by how little my stomach has hurt since I got to Singapore -- this coming from the girl who had stomach problems or acid reflux for the good part of the last decade. Only thing that's given me trouble was the McDonald's on my second day. It was more a desperation meal -- jetlagged to the point of immobility, starving, and they deliver here! That in itself is a cultural experience. But it felt like I got Montezuma's Revenge...McDonald's Revenge. Something like that.

I eat most of my meals at hawker centres (British spelling alert!) near work or home. They're basically open-air food courts where you can get lunch and dinner, plus fresh fruit juice and fruit all the time. Lime juice is the new water. Dessert can be a slab of ice cream in between two wafers, sold by ice cream vendors along the street. When I crave Western food, I hit the grocery store, which sells everything I miss, plus my favorite Aussie snacks like Shapes (crackers, pizza flavour) and Tim Tams (the kind of cookies that make me yelp out loud when I see them for sale, like a kid who sees Sunny D in the fridge. Got made fun of for that one).

Now I'm actually hungry. Forget this.