American Chinese food is as chinese to me as goat cheese, and i remember the first time i came to america, a college mate (bless her heart) tried to bond with The New International Student by talking about chinese food.

"i love Chinese food," she declared with glee. "especially chop suey."

huh? kong si mi? chop suey si simi lan?

I'd of course read and heard about the term in passing, but never really knew what it was. we certainly didn't eat it in asia, as far as i could tell. and trust me, being a singaporean, we know about our food and our neighbours food and our farfaraway-neighbour's food -- we know northern indian, southern indian, northern chinese and southern chinese, taiwanese, vietnamese, thai, cambodian, laotian, burmese, japanese and korean.

but chop suey? sorry. donch have.

so, reluctant to try out chinese restaurants here today (for some other reason, they use a lot of bamboo shoots here, which is really really weird) and overdosing somewhat on burgers and steaks and salad, we decided to do thai. and all i wanted was a simple tom yum soup and a pad thai.

the soup was alright but lemme tell ya... this was the worst pad thai i'd EVER eaten in my whole life. the husband didn't touch it. and we had to send the soggy mess away. it was frightful.

so now i'm hungry and talking about singaporean food with a friend in SG with whom i'd gladly trade places for a weekend (dowan weekday cos dowan to work), and i'm going outta my mind. And to right the dining wrong a tad, i'm gonna get a hit of instant noodles pronto. i need the noodle fix. BAD.