I just thought that I would quickly post this photo of me at the Merlion. This was from the good half of the day. Emily had some more crude suggestions for a shot but I think this was nice and classic.

Alternative titles are-
Mmmm Merlion Milk!
or
Some people will drink anything!

Thanks Emily for the photo

This past weekend

hello.
Saturday morning we went on a tour around singapore.
Friday night
We went to Far East square for dinner. We started as a group, even managing to coordinate 16 people, spread over 4 taxis, to the same place.
It really was quite an achievement. After problems, we managed to call a taxi and arrived at the square first, so went looking around. The avenues were lined with restaurants and bars, this part of town was obviously popular with the tourists and european community and there are many restaurants combining asian specialties together, or with in one case, french cuisine. Finding a bar, we sat down for a beer to celebrate finishing exams, however, the beer was a little pricey, so we kept it at one. After about 1/2 an hour, the last of our group arrived and we undertook the task of trying to find a restaurant. Eventually we realised it probably wouldn't happen, so we broke off from the group and ordered the menu for 4 at a thai-indonesian fusion restaurant.
The Food
We're still not quite used to the drinks over here and find the sweetened variety to be a little over the top in some cases, but burdened with the need to try everything once we often find ourselves dubiously sipping at fluorescent coloured beverages with tiny odd gel like balls floating around in them. The food was incredible, a very very spicy chilli basil chicken, a stir fried fish dish, a beef curry and an incredible soft shell crab, despite our full stomachs, we considered ordering another plate of this as it was just so devine.
A neat little box made of bamboo leaf filled with water chestnut and a milk based topping as well as some kind of dried fruit with a white sauce was a very tasty dessert of the day that came with the meal.
The reason I pay such attention to detail is that everyone always talks about the quality of the food in singapore and this restaurant certainly proved this to us.
We went off for a wander after the meal, searching for a cheaper beer house, and some where to sit. We found ourselves in an outdoors food court. It was quite impressive, people were flagging us down, asking us if we wanted satay. Our marketing skills came out as we questioned the businesses unique selling point.
We found ourselve in a nook of mama africa, a dark little pub decked out in african regalia. Hidden amongst the singaporeans, we drank our tiger beers and discussed the trip.
The Tour
Not wanting to be too tired for the tour, we headed back home quite early.
The tour started at 9.30 and took us to the esplanade where many a photo was taken of the merlion, which apparently started it's life on the other side of the road. Walking along the river and under the bridges, we came across a man with an albino python. We took turns feeling it and posing for photos, being the tourists that we obviously were before being turned away from our next destination by the presense of the national guard preparing their procedure for the National day on August 9. Stretchers with fake bodies and balloons could be seen as we drove past. So without seeing the raffles landing point, but hearing all about it from our ever informative guide, we made our way on towards china town. The Thian Hock Keng chinese buddist temple was incredibly ornate and the stop coincided with a brief burst of rain. Walking around the temple we learnt about how the temple was designed and the various gods that were worshipped there. With our heads bursting with folklorewe made our way through china town weaving in and out of the stalls.
Stopping for lunch near little india, we also looked briefly inside a muslim mosque as a prelude to next weekend's proposed tour of places of worship.
We also wove through the little india arcade. Some girls got themselves henna tattoos while others were content to watch. We were told that little india came to life at night. Unfortunately, around this point I left the tour and made my own way around, but I'm told the malay quarter was extremely beautiful.
I myself was in need of a digital camera, and I -think- I managed to get myself a good deal at Sim Lim Square, which is the electronics capitol of singapore. In addition I found my way to Bugis markets, a huge varied outdoor-indoor market.
After a snooze back at PGP, a few of us made our way back out to little india to see it by night.
The wet market was very impressive, with so much meat and fish and amazing fruits and vegetables like none I've seen before. Upstairs we found the indian dress stalls and marvelled at the incredible colours and detail. The items themselves seemed very cheap and I myself intend to return before I leave. We saw a few street performers and thought about making the journey home.
Unfortunately that wasn't as easy as we'd hoped. It took over an hour to hail a cab. We now know, if you want to catch a cab on a saturday night, you either have to wait at a cab rank, or you have to call and order them. For some reason, no matter how wildly we jumped up and down in front of cabs which were plainly for hire, they didn't seem to want to pick us up.
We are recuiting more people to post, so hopefully soon there will be some more accounts of what has been going on.

the golden snake

here's a quick photo update.
Below is Penny entwined with a Golden Python.

Aleph discovers Singapore

Welcome to the first post by Adi Smith-

I haven't really read the post from the others and I'm going to skip around a bit so if it gets a bit confusing and I repeat what the others have said... I don't care.

The trip really started uneventfully- we all arrived at the airport only really knowing a handfull of people. Those of us who came on time were able to browse the duty free shops (and I've come to the conclusion that duty free is a waste oftime), the late commers were treated to a long long wait in the queue (serves them right! You know who you are...).

I dont knon whow many people actually noticed this but all the SIA girls are all extreamly thin in the waist and I have to wonder if there are some strict guidelines about what they can and can't eat. Somemone said that seeing as the portions of food were almost non-existant on the flight that that wouldn't be that hard.

We arrived at Changi after a bumpy 8hr flight to be greeted by the usual hustle and bussle of the airport- this was with the obvious and quite intimidating addition of a couple of army guys strolling round with a pair of p-90's at the ready- for those foreigners that get too loud (Jenny) or the returning Singaporeans who refuse to be taken into national service (Eugene how did u get out of it?)

The greeting party at Changi consisted of a Ian and a couple of students from NUS... I met Wei Wen (a bridge fanatic) and Jen (I'm not really sure of her full name but Jen is Anglo enough for me) both involved in the SPS program at NUS- something like the equivelent of our Advanced Science Degree. These and other NUS studnets are taking some of the classes with us over here and some are also coming to Tioman Island for a bit of study in to the local biodiversity. Really just an excuse to have a bit of fun at a tropical resort.

The one thing that really sturk me as we exited the airport was the heat--- it was intense, and humid and I can only add stifling. It seems to bear down on you like an oppresive wet blanket dulling your reactions and thoughts. I thought as we arrived at the college that I would never be able to get used to the heat and that staying in the un-airconditioned bedrooms would be insane however I can safely say that after a week or so I have gotten used to it and indeed I like coming out of the antarctica that is our classroom and into the warmth of the outdoors.

Anyway.... back to the college apartments that we are staying at. The place is called PGP (Singaporeans have some weird fetish for TLA's [three letter acronyms] and from now on I don't think I'm going to explain them so that you can have a little bit of a go at guessing what they are) and it is loacated on Prince George's Parkway or something like that. It is really in itself something like a small town - there are over 2500 rooms, 3 cafeterias, tennis and basketball courts, a gym and several fountains all built around 30+ residentiatl appartment blocks.

This photo is looking out of my room on level 3 of an 8 story building into the courtyard in the middle of a block. There are some crazy patterns on the floor that I still haven't figured out yet but just remember there are another 30 or so of these buildings in the complex so it is huge!

The really cool thing bout the apartments is the locking system. They don't use keys here- keys are for stupid westerners and this is Singapore. What they actually use are transponders (no they are not a sneaky way for the government to track the movements of the students who have skipped out on national service) they are actually like little remote control keys for our door locks. You hold the up to the door and press a little button and you hear these two little beeps that mean that your door is now able to be unlocked. Of course it is not as easy as it sounds because me and nearly everyone I talked to said that they had to fiddle around for at least five minutes trying to figure them out. Bellow is a picture of the transponder and it is all a bit James Bond-esq for me, but fun anyway. I'm still scared of losing my transponder--- not because of being locked out of my room but rather the fact that a lock-out incurs something like a $50 fine- as they say "Singapore is a fine city" (get it?).

Another of the James Bond like things that we got was a pen that had all the SWB students in raptures. not only did this pen have the amazing ability to write in ink, but it also managed to dispense mini post-it-notes out of a secret compartment that eluded me for a good 10 minutes before I finally opened it. I know that to many people that might seem really lame- but to us, after a long day of new and exciting things , it was just the icing on the cake ;).

This poster appears outside the 6th floor bathroom - which is a girls' floor! 

Ordering our Prata 

Breakfast at the Cheese Prata 

Internet is now up and running

in some rooms at any rate.
We've arrived! The flight was a little bumpy. A head wind of 120 km/hr made for some interesting turbulence! Dr McFarlane met us at the airport with a gaggle of extra-ordinarly friendly and helpful singaporean students. Hot and sticky, we climbed onto an airconditioned bus and made our way to the Prince Georges Residences at NUS. The residences are huge, with just under 3000 individual rooms. We're all located in the same block, split across various floors, and despite some hiccups involving linen and towel misunderstandings, the whole process of moving in was relatively painless.
Our wonderful singaporean guides took us into town to get us all simcards, so we can communicate amongst ourselves while we're here, as well as EZYlink cards, to allow ease in transportation on buses and te MRT.
A breakfast of Prata, a pancake style food, filled with varoius ingredients and dipped in curry was an eye opener to the very different styles of food over here.
The heat was intense and it surprised us alot when on sunday night we awoke to one of the most fantastic thunderstorms. Unlike the ones we get in Sydney, the heavens seemed to be engaging in serious warfare, with amazing light displays with perfectly synchronised cannon as background music.
Monday morning, the sun was shining brightly again and we undertook our first exams.
Diving straight into Classes at the same time, we took a welcome break over lunch to get to know the staff involved in the program and our singaporean comrades a little better. We learned that we will have 9 students accompanying us to Tioman island, as well as a few others in our language and marketing classes.
The style of learning is very involved, and the work load seems daunting, but no one can say that we will leave here uncultured. We came here to learn, and learn we shall! With our first afternoon off tomorrow, we may venture into town to experience the sights and sounds for ourselves. Otherwise, it may be a wait until Friday evening, when we can chill for a while before our tour of the city on saturday.
Hopefully I can get the photo albumn working on this and soon we can have some images of our time.
This is only the beginning and I can tell that life isgoing to be busy, and colourful, but I doubt we'll have time to get bored.

Welcome

This is set up in order to record the experiences of 27 UNSW students as they treck across to Singapore. For 6 weeks, we will be participating in an exchange program with the National University of Singapore.
Our areas of study will be mandarin and indonesian languages, the asian market as well as spending a week on Pulau Tioman undertaking biodiversity studies. As the first group, we anticipate the cultural experience to be exciting and rewarding and by visiting this page you can follow us on our journey.