Taste Test Challenge

English food has a terrible reputation worldwide. Why? Well I can give you at least one example. The last time we were in England, we had a breakfast in our hotel. It consisted of eggs and sausages boiled in grease. Yes. Not fried. Boiled. The grease wasn't hot enough to fry, just sort of a warm simmering pan of week-old oil. Boiled long enough to absorb the greasy flavor of everything else they cooked in the same oil that week, but not hot or long enough to actually fry the egg or fully cook the sausages. If you accidentally cooked this at home, you would throw away and start over.

But to be fair, that was hotel food. And it was a very cheap hotel at that.

Is the rest of English food all that bad?

One way to find out is to do a taste test. Based on my previous experience, I didn't want to set the bar to high. So I had to find some type of food to give England a sporting chance.

So my taste test challenge is English Food vs. Airplane Food. It seemed like an obvious match-up of historically bad cuisine. And I didn't have access to other obvious contenders: hospital food or high school cafeteria food.

But it is not fair to represent all of England by one cheap hotel breakfast. So to find a better ambassador for the Empire, I went to a traditional pub in the afternoon and ordered one of the specials off their hand-written chalkboard menu.

Please meet today's contestants:

English Food	Airplane Food
click to enlarge	click to enlarge
The Defending Champ: On the left, representing England, a traditional pub meal from an inn in Wiltshire county.	The Challenger: On the right, representing the air travel industry, from Singapore Airlines Flight SQ-318
Weighing In With: Grilled sausages, potatoes, carrots, peas, gravy on everything, a basked of pre-buttered sliced bread, apple pie (not shown), and a pint of cold beer.	Weighing In With: Grilled beef, potatoes, carrots, crackers, cheese, one bread roll, shrimp salad with packet of thousand-island dressing on the side, and a tiny plastic cup of water.
Scoring: Visual Appeal: 8 Ambiance: 8 Taste: 9 Beer: Yes	Scoring: Visual Appeal: 3 Ambiance: 1 Taste: 5 Beer: No

The winner by unanimous decision: English Pub Food. No contest really. A meal with only a tiny plastic cup of water will never compare to anything with a pint of beer. There is nothing better than a generous country farm meal served with beer in a traditional English pub.

In fact, everything we ate in England was good, and with generous western-sized portions and friendly, but never overly persistent waiters.

As much as I've enjoyed all the variety of Asian food back in Singapore, noodles and rice can get old now and then. It is fabulous to get back to the west where you can enjoy a hearty meat-and-potatoes supper. Congratulations England!

We've arrived

Yes, we've arrived.

But first a short recap: We sold our house and our cars. Auctioned away or gave away almost all of our furniture. Downsized our clothing. Packed some bags. And flew to Singapore with one-way tickets and no return date.

Ok, that sounds more dramatic and braver than it really was, because we left with jobs waiting for us in Singapore. And our company moved us. And we didn't downsize so much that we don't have a shipping container on a boat somewhere, scheduled to arrive in Singapore in about 2 more weeks.


We had thes privilege of flying business class. We flew United Airlines, flight 853, to Tokyo-Narita airport, connecting to United 803 to Singapore. Other airlines have direct flights to Singapore, but not on our company's approved list of carriers. I didn't mind taking a connecting flight, because it helps break up the long overseas flight. Its almost eleven hours to Tokyo, and then another six to Singapore.

And, since we flew business class, we also had the pleasure of using the business class lounge in Narita where we could enjoy a perfectly poured beer from the famous Narita beer machine.

Our flight arrived in Singapore just before midnight, but we didn't get our luggage and clear customs until well into the morning. We had six suitcases between the two of us, mostly clothing. That may seem like a lot to travel with, but we don't know when the rest of our stuff will arrive, so we had to bring at least a couple of weeks of clothing.

Our relocation company arranged to have a driver waiting for us at the airport, but they didn't anticipate us having so many suitcases. The driver smiled and called in reinforcements in the form of a mini-van. A short drive later, we arrived at our service hotel, where we have been spending for the last two weeks.