This morning I went to Little India to find a statue of Ganesh. I’m not Hindu, but I used to work with Ganesh in the Silicon Valley and he was a pretty nice guy, so I figured a statue of him* would be a nice souvenir of Singapore.

Little India is full of cut-rate clothing shops, goldsmiths, phone card kiosks, tailors with sewing machines on the sidewalks, tiny restaurants, fruit stands, and the occasional temple. Incense is everywhere.

I found only two places that sold decent Ganesh statues. There were others, but they were either cheap tourist junk or gold-plated things that looked like cheap tourist junk, even though they were expensive. Seriously, gold-plated Ganesh is just tacky.**

The place I found had multiple Ganeshae in different sizes and materials. They cost more than I expected, so I had to go down in size, but I got a nice brass one for SG$95. I would have preferred this larger one, but at SG$12,500, it was out of my price range by a couple orders of magnitude. And Customs might have had some issues.

Anyway, yadda yadda, it’s now evening, and I am once again having satay and beer on Boat Quay. It’s at a different place, though. The first place was quick to bring me beer, but for some reason wouldn’t take my order. So I left some money on the table and went to a different place, where they seem happy to bring me satay. And I drank the peanut sauce again.

* I’m not 100% sure it’s the same Ganesh, but he could have had a nose job.
** I’m pretty sure I saw Gold-Plated Ganesh open for REO Speedwagon.