FROM PENANG TO SINGAPORE TO MANILA

It was a covert mission. As I embarked on my nth trip to Singapore a few weeks ago no one – not my companions from the Ateneo faculty, not the eagle-eyed customs officers at Changi Airport, not the organizers of the convention I was attending – would have guessed that my purpose of visit wasn’t all that it seemed. Though I had to play the part of an Asian intellectual for the four days that I was in the Lion City, there was a burning secret task that I had kept inside me all along. I was on a quest, and nothing was going to stop me:

I had to have a serving of the legendary oyster omelette delight at the Newton Circus hawker center.

I could not, would not, come back to Manila without having it. Because of my unwavering allegiance to Singaporean cuisine and my inborn obsession with good food in general (it is a trait common in all Taurean women, I hear), this journey, which was in the planning for months, caused me such gastronomic stress, sleepless nights and recurrent childhood memories. As I dreamed of the omelette, I would remember the way my cousins and I would feast on a giant palanggana of raw oysters by the beach, long, long before we ever knew that this sumptuous seafood was actually a potent aphrodisiac.

As this was an act of espionage, I had come prepared. First, I paid a couple of visits to my favorite Singaporean restaurant in Manila, Penang at the Podium. There I lunched with my food coach, restaurateur par excellence Marc Licaros, and he explained to me the inner workings of Singaporean food.

Marc prepped me by feeding me the best items on their menu, from lamb curry to green mango salad to shrimp to tilapia to roti – but not, conspicuously, oysters. I suppose there was a reason for that, and I was to find out for myself later.

He told me of his recent visit to the charming city of Penang, Malaysia, after which the resto was named, an exotic island with marvelous colonial architecture and long stretches of beach. Formerly a prosperous trading post, it is a highly cosmopolitan urban center that has a bright mix of indigenous Malays with migrant Chinese, Indians and Arabs – like the multi-cultural mix of neighboring Singapore itself.

There in the city of Penang, Marc explained to me, the Nonya style of cooking was born. Meaning "grandmother," Nonya food is a hybrid of Chinese and Malay cuisines, and has its own unique combination of flavors from mainly ginger, galingale, lemon grass and dried shrimp paste (yup, bagoong!); it also has a sharp, sour tang to it, owing to either tamarind or calamansi. Just as the Kapampangans or the Bicolanos or the Ilocanos have their own unique spin on Pinoy food, Nonya is a highly popular, region-related method of putting Malaysian cuisine on another level.

So basically, Guru Marc gave me the key to understanding Singaporean food: by first understanding Malaysian food. Like the multi-racial country itself, Singaporean cuisine is a heady mix of the best of its Malay, Chinese and Indian influences, whose various smells trigger memories of the homeland for the descendants of migrants.

As any foodie would know, anything you put in your mouth just tastes better when you’re aware of the history behind it.

And as any seasoned traveler would know, there’s nothing like the local culinary experience to make one’s trip truly memorable.

I don’t know how I did it, but I actually sat through two days of speeches, lectures and schmoozing with Asia’s most brilliant academics as they spoke of the future of worldwide media and communications, exhorting media practitioners and teachers like myself to make sure that we responsibly and creatively harness the power of information for the good of all, warning us of the impending danger of a real-life Blade Runner or The Matrix. But all I could think of was my oyster omelette.

Finally, finally. The night before I departed came my moment of truth. I glanced at my map and the words Newton Circus glared at me. I talked to the hotel concierge and asked for specific directions, which I recorded in my MD player. I called up a good Singaporean friend and made sure the concierge wasn’t putting me on. Then I hailed a cab in the midst of the rush hour and asked the cab driver if my friend told me the truth.

My mouth watered as I looked out the window, taking in all I was seeing, in this already-familiar little city-state I loved so dearly. The emotional architecture of The Esplanade, the quaint shophouses, the pubs by the river, the great big acacias, and the damn cleanliness of it all. The post-post-SARS celebratory mood on Orchard Road that Friday evening, as people spilled on the streets to shop till they dropped.

Then I stumbled upon a precious insight on the traveling experience: each one starts a trip anticipating something, and one prepares oneself carefully for it, as I did, like a man on a mission – whether it be a shopping find, or a long-lost love, or an oyster omelette. And when you have this sense of purpose, the sightseeing, the tourist traps, the monuments and the museums, suddenly take on a different meaning. A meaning that is for you, and you alone.

Oh, yeah, just like life itself, isn’t it?

When I got to the hawker center, I was dizzy with traveler’s ecstasy. I pushed myself through the dinner crowd, floating above the din of a hundred dialects and a thousand aromas. And there, I saw it, my oyster omelette, being pushed around by a spatula on a giant wok, beckoning me, teasing me, seducing me. I’ve come a long way for this, I said.

You can only imagine the pleasure I had when I finally had my first bite, then the second, to the last.

And now here I am, back in Manila, no longer dreaming of having that oyster omelette again. For now, at least.

But when I do crave for it again, I would go about it the exact same way I did the last time. From Penang to Singapore to Manila. And no other way.