7/14/2013 - 4th of July on the Island

"What's more American than Corn Flakes, the 4th of July and Uncle Sam?"  A song from my elementary school years kept ringing in my head last weekend when we spent the afternoon at Smokey's BBQ last weekend celebrating the 4th of July with 120 of our new best friends.  We are now 2 for 2 with our major American holidays here, Thanksgiving and 4th of July. It seemed like every American in Singapore (as well as a few Canadians and Singaporeans) had gotten word that a BBQ joint had been rented out for the evening and if they were lucky enough to score a ticket they could have all the BBQ they could eat as well as some American beer.

We arrived a few hours early to the sight of red white and blue banners, Maverick and Goose in flight suits and flip flops, stick on tattoos and plenty of red white and blue beads and necklaces (likely made in China). Prior to the food, the beer options were Budweiser or the local Singapore microbrew, Archipelago, which is actually pretty tasty.  At this, I was torn.  Being a native son of Wisconsin, we do not like to stray far from our Miller roots.  In fact, at school in Madison I think you can actually get expelled for making that faux pas.  However, being an American in a strange land, it seemed safer to choose something from 1,000 miles away from where I grew up instead of 10,000 miles away. Luckily, we had come prepared and I came up with what I consider to be a reasonable compromise.  Besides, wearing my Wisconsin football jersey, its red and white after all, gave me the additional cover I needed.

Thankfully, we didn't have to wait too long before the food came out because the smell was enough to make you want to make a run for the kitchen and see if you could steal some ribs without anyone noticing.  Chicken, ribs, pulled pork, coleslaw, mac and cheese (mac and cheese!) corn on the cob and venison chili nachos.  Wow, after months of your stomach shrinking and conforming to Asian portions we did our best to stretch it right back out again.  Seconds were had and come to think of it, I'm pretty sure thirds were as well.  We had been to Smokey's once before, but hadn't been back since we discovered the Pit practically in our backyard.  I think this convinced us it was worth the extra effort to head across town every now and then.

After dinner it was normal backyard cookout conversation, sports, politics, travel plans, etc.  If there hadn't been people in the apartments across the street staring at everyone the entire evening (I think a week later they are still trying to figure out exactly what was going on) we could have been at any bar, backyard or lake in the US.  The moral of the story as always, "If you build it, people will come" or in this case, "if you grill it, people will come."