Been a while since the last post. Nope, we have not been eaten up by a shark.Nope, we have not been poisoned by a spider. That's Australia. Wrong country. We migrated to NZ remember? We are very much still alive :)
The weather has been pretty awesome lately. It's now late-spring. The sun is raising earlier and earlier and setting later and later. Dawn starts at about 5.30am-ish. Dusk is @ 8.30pm-ish. I'll do a separate post on how it affects daily life another time.
Anyway today's post is about something else. When we started this blog, besides documenting our adventure, we wanted to provide an avenue to share our insights of migrating to NZ from a Singaporean perspective. It struck me that even when I refer to "Singaporean perspective", everyone's experiences is going to be different depending on his/her background, race, temperament etc etc...
Thought I'll blog on about something interesting about how the different races in Singapore might experience Wellington differently. I'll try to put myself into the shoes of the 3 major races Chinese, Malay and Indian and talk about the topic every Singaporean loves best: Food. Hopefully this might provide some insight from a different angle on whether Wellington/NZ is the place for you. This is the first of the series.
[Indian Food]
There's this saying that culturally Australia is more American whereas New Zealand is more British. That may explain why there are so many Indian restaurants around ( Chicken Tikka Masala is England's
national dish). There's at least 1 Indian restaurant on every street in Wellington City. You'll probably be surprised at how deeply curry has ingrained itself into the Kiwi culture. When you go into an Indian restaurant, you are likely to see more Caucasians dinning than Indians. At my work place, one day a week is desingated curry day.(In case you need me to spell it out: It's the day whereby the entire office goes to an Indian restaurant to have curry).
The Good News: Biryani, Masala, Korma, Vindaloo, Rogan josh and many others which I can't even pronounce. They are all available here. Even Tairu is available here!( I've yet to come across Rasum though). Ms shortie loves papadum and it's available at pretty much every Indian restaurant.
Are they authentic? Not by Singapore standards. They have been pretty much adapted to the Kiwi's taste-bud. The UK standard of curry customization applies here: mild, medium, Kiwi Hot, Indian Hot.
The curry comes in a variety of meats too. From your standard chicken & mutton to more exotic ones such as duck. Take note that it's quite common to see Beef and Pork curry on the menu though.
A typical set lunch includes the following. Notice that it's pretty high in carbo:
- Rice
- Roti (In singapore we call it Naan)
- 1 portion of curry
- Price: $7-12
The Bad News: Pretty much every Indian restaurant we went to has roughly the same menu. They revolve around curry and curry and curry. I've yet to see Indian Rojak. No soup kambeng. No fish head curry. Can't recall coming across Mutabak.
If you can't live without your Banana leaf or Apollo or Muthu's curry, maybe you want to think twice.
Mr Fatty
