28-01-2009

We just finished a four day weekend here, in celebration of the Chinese New Year.  There is no "new year's day;" Monday and Tuesday are both considered "Chinese New Year."  The original plan had been to spend the weekend in Malaysia, we had already booked a hostel, but due to unavailable transportation I ended up staying in Singapore.  This was still good as I did something new/old and exciting each day.  

Saturday I went with a few others to Pulau Ubin, a very small island off the north east coast of Singapore.  This island was fairly dirty and smelly but in a nice way; it gave me a pretty good idea of what a third-world country would be like.  We rented bicycles for four dollars a piece and just rode around the island for a few hours.  This is us jumping:

Sunday was New Year's Eve so we went to China town to get the full Chinese experience.  There was a large quantity of people congregating there.  There were plenty of balloons and fireworks, the latter being mostly obscured by the large building seen in this picture:

 

Monday was the Singapore Bird Park, which is a zoo for birds.  As advertised there were nine thousand birds in the park.  There were large cages for viewing, large enclosures for walking through, and bird shows for watching.  We were in a large seemingly open yet actually enclosed space that housed thousands of tropical birds where they were handing out cups of sugar water to feed the birds:

People would hold out the cups and one or two parrot-looking birds would land on the edge and start drinking.  These birds were very friendly and allowed you to get very close.

I did not have any sugar water because it cost three dollars but was so fortunate as to have just such a bird perch unprovoked on my shoulder.  This was a fairly unique occurrence; many people were taking photographs of me and I felt very full of myself.  A jealous Chinese man approached me from behind and attempted to relieve me of the bird via his cup of sugar water.  However he was only successful in startling the bird which kicked the cup, emptying it all over my shoulder, and flew away.

Another slightly less exciting adventure took place at the "Birds of Prey" show.  For part of the show a flock of a dozen or so Red Kites were released into the amphitheatre.  Keepers would sling small scraps of meat into the air so the Kites would swoop down and catch them.  I was chosen as a volunteer to "help" sling shot a piece of meat at the Kites, very exciting.  As compensation for my hard labor I was given a postcard of the fabled and exotic "bald eagle."  This was actually quite disappointing because previous participants had received Ben & Jerry's coupons.

Yesterday Sam and I went to the Singapore Art museum.  It was relatively small and contained only modern art, some of which was very impressive.  Photographs were not allowed in the galleries.  

26-01-2009

The grading system at NTU is a fair bit different than what I am accustomed to at RPI.  There a typical course consists of two to four exams throught the semester, a final, and homework assignments, all contributing relatively evenly towards the final grade.  My classes here have one midterm worth 20%, and the final, which is essentially your entire grade.  One of my classes has homework but it is not collected or graded.  This system encourages a general slacking procedure throughout the first few months of school.  I have heard a couple locals explain that they are on vacation until finals start at which point they study furiously and then vacation starts again.  I have been trying to stay up to date on my class subjects but it is a little more difficult.  

This is the front of the campus art building which is possibly the coolest building I have every seen.  I don't have any classes there but I like taking pictures of it anyway.

23-01-2009

I want to talk now about someone here we call Klein.  Klein's real name is Bui Quang Khoi and resides in Vietnam.  He is Sam's student buddy as well as one other student's from RPI.  A student buddy is an NTU student assigned to an exchange student in order to help them learn the ropes of NTU and Singapore in general.  I haven't seen my student buddy since the second day I was here but Klein has been a great buddy to me and everyone else ever since I got here.  Klein hangs out with us a few times a week, gives us advice, and answers all our questions.  He stutters frequently and is a phenomenally nice guy.

This is Klein and me at the sushi restraunt on campus.  Pricey but pretty good.  The sushi comes around past all the tables on a conveyer belt and they charge you at the end based on the quantity and colors of your plates.

During the second week we were required to purchase our Student's Pass and I was having a hard time with the payment methods.  The Student Pass is the equivalent of a student visa and without it I would be illegal and unable to come and go from Singapore.  It only cost forty dollars but they would only except payment via Cash Card.  I discovered this on the only day we were given to purchase the pass. I went to the seven eleven to purchase the card for fifteen dollars, but actually putting money on the card requires a special machine which was broken.  They told us to go to the library where there was another such machine but it turned out to be broken as well.  Klein to the rescue.  Klein actually payed for four of our Student Passes with his card ultimately preventing our immediate demise. 

This past Saturday we went to Finale V, a show in celebration of the Vietnamese new year Tet. The show was loosely based on American Idol; there were ten contestants who each performed one piece and at the end the audience voted for their favorite "star".  Klein and his band were the third act and they performed Eric Clapton's "Change the World."  The band was awesome and everyone wa

s completely amazed at how Klein sang; he stutters when he talks b

ut he has an idol quality voice.  There were about one thousand in attendance and Klein won the popular vote by less than twenty.  The ten of us (who Klein got in for free) and the people we convinced sitting behind us felt mildy responsible for Klein's success.  Klein and his group A+:

Wednesday night ten of us went to the Raffles Hotel for the Hall XVI Chinese New Year dinner.  It cost fifteen dollars and we recieved an eloquent eight course chinese dinner.  There was entertainment and the dinner was followed by an orange eating contest which our table won.  We all had to wear red for the occasion.

20-01-2009

"I like the word 'gumption' because it's so homely and forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn't likely to reject anyone who comes along." -Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

 

18-01-2009

Singaporeans don't use napkins. None of the canteens on campus have napkins and neither do any of the restaurants I have been to. This is one custom I am not fond of as some Singaporean meals can be quite messy. I similar concept here which may contribute towards the explanation is the lack of paper towels. Yesterday I saw a paper towel dispenser for the first time and it cost ten cents a sheet. This would appear to be a rigorous attempt to limit the waste of paper; they are very big on environmental sustainability here. However this has been quite a nuisance for me as I am going through a dastardly cold. Luckily I brought little packs of tissues from home, hopefully they will last me the semester. I've already used about half of them.

Yesterday I went with the NTU windsurfing club for a five dollar orientation to learn how to windsurf. It took place on the east coast which is approximately the furthest point on the island from NTU. We took a maxiCab there which seats seven people; the ride lasted maybe forty minutes. The MRT/bus ride back took about ninety minutes.

The orientation included lunch so five dollars sounded like an incredible deal until we got there and they only had two boards. There were about twenty five newcomers there so no one really got a lot of time windsurfing. Except Alex that is; the Swede apparently had a little prior experience which allowed him to successfully sail out, but not enough to turn and come back. He was gone for about an hour, just sailing back and forth parallel to the beach until he finally reached shore somewhere much further down the beach.

Windsurfing is quite a bit harder than I expected. I made two attempts, each lasting approximately 5-10 minutes, and each ending fairly unsuccessfully. The sail is attached to the board only by one ball and socket type of joint, which allows the surfer to fully maneuver it however necessary. This makes it very difficult as a beginner to balance both myself and the sail. The wet slippery board doesn't help either. At one point I was able to stand on the board while holding the sail in both hands for what may be an inaccurately guessed ten seconds. I liberally call this "windsurfing." I then tried to turn the sail to catch a bit of breeze and promptly fell off. Most people didn't fair any better; RPI Nick was able to move about fifteen feet in a fairly stationary position at which point the instructor told him either turn or drop the sail since you could see him continuing in a straight line out into the Pacific. Nick of course dropped the sail.

I put on sunscreen right before proceeding onto the beach, but neglecting to reapply later on resulted in a fairly severe sunburn on various parts of my body. The burn is mostly on my face but there are random red spots and streaks on the rest of my body which may be due to poorly applied lotion. It is good that I brought Aloe Vera along from home because one tube of it here costs thirteen dollars.

A good time overall because the beach was beachful, the weather was great, and I wasn't bitten by a manatee.

13-01-2009

This past Sunday I went to a church service with three others at 12:30. The church was one of those contemporary cult-like arena style churches. It was called city harvest and the first half hour was basically a christian rock concert. I would guess there were about two thousand people in attendance and they were all clapping in time, singing along, raising their hands to the heavens and freaking me out. There were three giant screens at the front to show random images that went along with the lyrics and to show the religious zealots in action. Towards the end they were all mumbling this chant-like prayer that was in god knows what language. The sermon was what you would expect from an American who travels all over the world "spreading the word" and praising his life-changing book (which he didn't write; it was dictated to him by God.) It was a novel experience. Note the lyrics on the screen say "Shout it out loud, shout it out Jesus."

Saturday afternoon was spent at the zoo. I haven't been to a zoo in a while so I can't accurately compare but I would say this zoo had an immense quantity of animals. They didn't have a platypus but other than that I can't think of anything they didn't have. In general I don't have many pictures of myself because I don't generally take pictures of myself and I feel uncomfortable asking other people to take my picture. I give this as an explanation of why the quantity of photos featuring myself is small. All but two of these people are RPI students. Anna in the middle is from Spain and Poroshat towards the right is a full-blooded Persian who lives in Canada. To the right is my roommate Sam (far right). Last night I played ultimate frisbee for over two hours and I pulled my hamstring. I also developed a neck/throat/head ache but it feels mostly better now. I had fun despite these things.

09-01-2009

The NTU campus has sixteen residence halls. The all have highly creative names such as hall 2, hall 3, and hall 4. Hall 3 and hall 16 are the two newest halls and it is widely known that these are the only halls with "air con." All of the RPI students are staying in these two halls and is a mild sore point among the other exchange students. A sample dialogue:
"So which hall are you staying in?"
"Hall 16."
"Oh..."
The RPI students are apparently recieving preferential treatment in many regards. Steve was having trouble with his schedule and some full classes, but when it became apparent that he was an RPI student things were quickly shifted around and smoothed out for him. This is the first semester of RPI's new REACH program where students are sent from RPI to NTU and vise-versa and the idea is to expand the number of exchanged students in the coming years. Therefore things must go perfectly for all students involved; I don't think all RPI students will be getting AC next year.

This is what hall 16 looks like from the outside.

Here is what my room looks like from the outside. You are never really "indoors" until you actually enter the room; the entire hall is very open. All of the locals leave their footwear on the floor outside their rooms. Sam has started to do this as well but I see no reason to.

Here is what my room looks like from the inside.

Hall 16 consists of five "blocks" A - E. This is a bridge connecting block D to block E which is where I reside.

Last night we went to see a Thai kungfu movie called Ong Bak II. The film was highly action packed with a failing plot and little dialogue, yet very entertaining to watch. Movies here are 8.50. We followed that up with some ice cream and apple pie from McDonalds. Now I see why the estimate for "personal expenses" was so high; everything here seems to cost money.

06-01-2009

All of the cars here are very clean. This may be due to the frequent rain showers, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of fine for having a car that is too dirty. There are no SUVs and none of what we would call trucks. They just have these small old-looking truck-like machines that have the primary purpose of carting around large quantities of people in the back. They all have side railings to ameliorate this purpose. Public transportation is heavily pushed here; there are small billboards everywhere stating: "Please use public transportation." Taking the bus is much less of a hassle because it comes around so frequently. There is no need to plan for a stop, just wait a few minutes until the next bus comes around. It isn't free though so I may have spent a significant amount on the bus and MRT (subway) by the end of the semester.

I saw this in a bakery at the mall near the school; I thought it was very clever.
I had my first few classes yesterday. First was Dynamics & Control which I had with Sam and Steve, another RPI classmate. The professor was Chinese but had very good english, a lot better than most of the asian professors I have had at RPI. It was very much an introductory class; I certainly didn't learn anything and I don't really have a very good idea as to what the course is going to be about, but I think it should be good.

Then I had a lab; they apparently expect the exchange students to know everything about these things just by intuition. I had no idea where my lab was and when I finally found it I had no idea what I was expected to do. Luckily some of the locals helped me out but I think I should have been given a bit of a heads up.

When waiting for an event to start, say a show, concert, lecture, or dinner, I am accustomed to hearing a steady murmur of crowd noise. I am familiar with this noise. I was a bit surprised though to find that in my two lectures I had yesterday this noise continued from when I entered the lecture theater to when I left. It seemed very obnoxious to me but the professor didn't even seem to notice.

All tutorials and some labs are not given the first week of school so today I only have a lab. Hopefully I won't have a horrible time figuring out where to go and what I need to do.

03-01-2009

From what I have seen so far, Singapore is very aesthetically appealing. It is very clean and clear that appearance is a high priority here. The NTU campus itself is beautiful; I believe this is one of my favorite aspects of studying here. I will give more descriptions when I have taken some pictures.

It turns out my roommate is a fellow RPI student. I had thought it would be nice to have an exchange student from another country like Europe but I think this will be good. My roommate Sam seems very friendly and he is also extremely generous. I am already 180 dollars in debt. Apparently no one here accepts traveler's checks, despite our adviser's recommendation to bring large quantities of money in traveler's check form. Later today I am going with a few RPI mates to an HSBC bank where they will supposedly accept them.

The other night I went with a dozen other exchange students to Little India. This is essentially the entire country of India squeezed into maybe one square mile. I've never actually been to India so I can't directly compare but I guess they have a lot of shops there. India's economy must consist entirely of a complex, chaotic, giant conglomerate of shops. I forgot to bring my camera so I took this picture from the Internet to give a general idea.There was a very unique smell that I would associate with body odor, but according to a website I read on little India it was actually the heady scent of spices and jasmine garlands. Besides the shops there were also some incredibly ornate Hindu monuments. I say monuments because I have no idea what they were or what purpose they served. The larger one we saw was impressive: very colorful, arches covered with countless tiny sculptures, and people inside kneeling and doing their thing.

I still need to buy toothpaste and an alarm clock among other things.