Paging "New Asia": Sambal Is a Feedback Loop, Coconut Is a Code, Rice Is a System.

This article looks at the significance of the Singapore-as-New Asia concept to the formation of queer culture in Singapore. The theory of cybernetics helps to explain how New Asian regional sexuality is characterized by a consumption of Asian values organized in a system that restructures information as New Asian capital. The film Sambal Belacan in San Francisco, directed by Madeleine Lim, documents the lives of some members of the Singapore and Malaysian Bisexual and Lesbian Network in San Francisco, California. The film uses food as a site for cultural maintenance and negotiation. Consuming sambal belacan requires a form of cultural capital that is acquired through the privilege of shared knowledge.