Are These Singapore Folk Tales or Urban Legends?

Picked up Nicholas Yong's 'Seven Sacks of Rice and Other Baggage' (2023). It's all about Singapore stories. These 10 short stories are rather familiar, and could be easily heard from neighbors, from grandparents, and friends. But it's also the author's own creation.

It's like... kampung tales organized into a book. Is it satire? Probably. We read stories when we don't get to hear it from people we know. Are they urban legends or have they firmly become folk tales? Apparently these stories are also based on the author's family history. 

These stories span decades, or are from a bygone era or they could be inserted into any year we know. The context is oddly familiar. There are stories about seeing ghosts in a flat in Jurong, a Chicken Task Force, a coffin floating down Singapore River, some weird woodcutter and the Korean-Japanese War in 1931, a young boy being a runner for a loan shark, and a Mr Kim at a tattoo parlor,  

The book opened with the eponymous story 'Seven Sacks of Rice'. It's pretty much a tragedy of ancient societal and family customs and trying to meet expectations. A woman birthed girls and hence adopted a son. She pretty much BOUGHT a son in China from her next village for seven sacks of rice. Then the family came to Singapore. Of course it's replete with a useless husband. This boy never came to understand or love his family. The boy grew up in hate and fear and carried that with him all his life. He never embraced his adoptive mother, sisters or family. He also probably died alone. 

He ran away from home time and again. On occasion, he would be found sleeping by roadside stalls. It got to the point where Lee Eng asked her mother to send hum back to China, but Kim Choo merely repeated her stock line, “I paid seven sacks of rice for him.” She was always the first one to look for him whenevr he went missing. Eventually, the day came when Ming Ching did not come home, and his adoptive family stopped searching for him. He was 12 years old.

There was also a story ‘Ming Chao’ about a reporter being asked to kill a story, by the Prime Minister of a country, no less. The title is a reference to the Chinese hell notes ‘冥鈔’. She smartly asked for something in return — an interview with the Prime Minister, face to face and rather long. Nobody was harmed, and it didn't flout any laws. It's not even morally questionable. And she got things done, and it leaves you wondering how much wheeling and dealing we all have to do throughout our lives in order to 'get things done'.

I laughed so hard at the coffin floating down Singapore River along Boat Quay. ‘Water Body’. That ended with a corpse reanimating as a vampire. The story used the Chinese term spelt in pinyin ‘jiangshi’ (殭屍).  HAHAHAHHAHA. Then it got worse. The language is perfectly fine. Kinda funny really. But the stories themselves left me in stitches.

We have a divinity-ghost story of a Ming dynasty ghost and a scholar in a Taiwanese Mazu temple in ‘The Queen of Heaven’, zombies in an apocalypse in Singapore on its 28th day in ‘Heightened Alert’. And then the book ended with a final odd little story ‘Mr Kim’, about a Mr Henry Kim who was a customer at a Singapore tattoo parlor before he was assassinated in Kuala Lumpur. He was the half brother of the infamous North Korean dictator-leader.

I can't miss the literal point of 'baggage'. Be it as sacks of rice, anything physical, including a human, or emotional. How much baggage do we want to carry and how much do we want to let go?

お正月 :: 魚とお雑煮

Began the year with an easy luncheon of fish and ozoni (お雑煮). I didn't bother with going to an overpriced and complicated Japanese restaurant. I also booked it at the last minute. Opted for old-school Keyaki at Pan Pacific Hotel. 

I skipped their New Year kaiseki menu because there were items on it that I didn't want. Definitely NO FOIE GRAS or anything tuna. I cannot be bothered to pay for tuna and wagyu beef when I don't like it. If I wanted everything replaced on the menu, I might as well stick to the standard sushi omakase menu that comes with a soup. 

There were the standard appetizers which were pretty tasty. I liked the corn chawanmushi, and the Okinawa tofu, and that sweet shiro ebi. But I gave most of the crab to the husband. The husband enjoyed this amount of food and sushi. He can't do more nowadays. So this menu worked really well for him. 

Then there was sashimi and seven pieces of nigiri sushi. Of course I wouldn't have that much shiny fish here except for shima aji. They have no in-season kohada and no sawara or sayori. SAD. Most Japanese restaurants wouldn't offer it as sushi or sashimi because their clientele no like. I'm just weird. 

The handroll that came after the sushi was a bit of a nightmare though. I wish I knew what it was before telling them to change it out to something else. It was FULL OF SAKURA EBI. OMG. I took a bite and gave it all to the husband who merrily ate it. 

It was nice to end the meal with a bowl of hearty hot soup and fruits. I didn't need fancy; I wanted dependable, and Keyaki delivered. It was an absolutely satisfying luncheon.

A Lovely NYE Menu at Humpback

It has been many years since I ventured to dine out on New Year's Eve. Many of these parties and dinners are crap. But on 31 December, 2025, I bravely did, putting my trust in good old Humpback. And they delivered. It was a good four-course set menu; food was trotted out fast, and the quality wasn't any lower than their usual lovely standards. 

I wisely chose the 6pm dining slot. There were so many free parking lots at this timing. The floofs came along and they always like to have some light before sunset lengthened the shadows. Also, we still get happy hour oysters before 7pm. Hahahah. I like Puget Sound oysters and anything from the Pacific Northwest. This is why I only want to eat oysters at Humpback. 

We had our favorite corner table reserved for us. The floofs were comfortable there. They could choose to snooze or people-watch. Importantly, I wanted to get home before the mad crowds hit town for the Marina Bay countdown parties.

In this four-course menu, we get options on what we would prefer for the starters, small plates, mains and desserts, with some options of price supplements. For starters, we both skipped the burrata, cherry tomatoes and prosciutto. That's something we eat all the time. Dunwan liao. So we opted for red prawn and sea urchin ceviche with tosazu vinaigrette. There was their usual blob of soft shokupan with excellent seaweed butter. 

Took a small plate of Cévennes onion soup with two cute seared scallops, and another of short neck clams with koi cream and green asparagus. These portions are meant for one, so it's perfect for us to share everything.  

The mains were Patagonian toothfish with sake beurre blanc and a side of maitake, and a pasta of casarecce with king crab and lobster bisque. We passed on the wagyu tenderloin with garlic mash and black truffle. I'm sure the kitchen would do it well, but we would rather have seafood tonight.  

We initially only wanted one dessert — the chestnut mont blanc tart. But they didn't want us to 'lose out' and convinced us to take home the other hojicha tiramisu. Hahah... okaaaay. To our credit, we didn't even order a bottle of champagne or wine. We simply went with two drinks each, taking it really easy.