wow, it's been a while now

ok...
so, we're back from tioman. I apologise for the lack of updates, I guess so much has happened since I last wrote that it'll be a little funny.
This won't be in any kind of order I guess, just random things that we've been doing.

I'll try and pick up from Desaru.

Desaru is a tiny little village on the coast of Johor. We negotiated a room at the one hotel we could find after dicovering that the motel we initially had in mind was just a smidgen far away (read 40km) and the 5 of us spent most of the afternoon lazing on the beach, enjoying the warm waters and generally relaxing after the long journey.
We found the local food to be quite impressive, between us ordering squid and stingray as well as a few other culinary delights. We headed back to the beach to enjoy the cooler evening and in very cliched fashion found ourselves lying back looking at the stars and commenting on satellites we could see. Sadly the insects known as mosquitos and sandflies soon defeated us and we crawled into bed. Vowing to watch the sunrise over the ocean the next morning, I set my trusty phone alarm for 5.45 (a compromise made between my suggestion of 6am and those of others who were certain the sun rose before then)
The night passed and before we knew it, my alarm was rousing us from our sleep.
After pressing the snooze button only once, I dragged myself from the bed and found some clothes. The others protested, but soon all 5 of us were making our way through the dark and down the path to the beach. The lights of fishing boats dotted the ocean scape, but no rays of sunshine were yet to be seen.
We joked around and took photos as we waited for the sun to meet us. Finally some time around 6.30 the first rays started to stain the sky. The clouds were quite impressive, and if I get my act together properly, I may well get some photos up here someday!
Once the sun had found its way into the sky, we headed back up to the hotel for our complementary breakfast. It was interesting to see the buffet dotted with fruit, eggs, and fried noodles. Definitely a new experience for us, but one we would come to expect after our time in tioman.
Finally, after lazing on the beach and in the pool for most of the rest of the day, we opted to catch the ferry back to singapore, rather than attempt another 7 hour bus trip.
Oddly enough, it took us longer to get to a bustop from the ferry station at changi wharf than it did for us to get from malaysia back to singapore.
7 hours on buses, and 30 minutes on a boat... go figure.
But, as we all seemed to agree, the journey there was half the fun. (although the others can correct me if I'm wrong)

So guess who's being swamped by work of late!

That's right, we're feeling the pressure.
Exams have finished, and in exchange, tomorrow we have 4 things due in! Feel the heat. Well, maybe not that bad, but there has been a flutter as everyone frantically tries to get their assignments finished before tomorrows midday deadline.
I can't even remember how much has happened since my last update.
Over the weekend a few of us went to Malaysia for a short stint.

We selected a location known as Desaru (apparently ru means village) thinking it would be relatively easy due to its close proximity to singapore, we misjudged how long it would take for us to get there.
We left PGP around 8.30 am, and finished in Desaru around 3 in the afternoon, considering that when we caught the ferry back the following day, the trip from desaru to the changi beach ferry took 2 hours including waiting at malaysian ferry dock for 1 hour, the trip there was a little more eventful.
We found our way to Woodlands, where we had been directed we should take a bus to Johor. Once there, a friendly bus person told us which bus we should get to singapore customs and where to change after that.
That was fantastic, except that the customs lady in singapore was unfamiliar with our student passes, and decided we seemed suspect, so the 5 of us were escorted to the back room of customs. We of course found this hilariously amusing, and tried tremendously not to giggle as we waited our turn.

The darker, more sinister side of customs is really quite dull, and thankfully we were dealt with fairly quickly. The man behind the desk looked at us very confused and asked why we were there, this confused us, because we were certain that -he- should know. No matter, he soon granted us passage, and with yet another stamp in our brand spanking new passports, we headed into no mans land to cross the waters over to Johor Baru.
No sooner had we stepped off the escalator when we encountered our next problem. Somehow, 2 of our party managed to walk through a 1 way turnstile... to the path that leads to Malaysia on foot. This was not what we wanted, as the bus we wanted was on the other side of the turnstile. Unsure of what was going to happen, we waited for them. Thankfully, customs and security here seem to be very helpful and someone allowed them through a back door to get back to us (although I'm sure this was unconventional)
So, amused, we lined in the aisles to get on a bus. once crossed the bridge we passed through malaysia customs. Immediately after this it was apparent we were in malaysia. To reboard the bus, there were no ordered queues, rather swarms of people flooded towards the bus and entered via both front and back doors.
crammed inside, and not underneath the airconditioning, we headed towards the station where we would hopefully get a connection to desaru.

We got off the bus, and were immediately acosted by taxi drivers. Eyes straight forward, we sternly waived them off and attempted to locate the bus we needed. Thankfully, a considerate man who was with his wife and daughter offered to help us, and went off to get the information we needed. 10 mins later he was back armed with the facts. We should catch a bus to Kota Tinggu, from there we could get another bus to Desaru.
We thanked him profusely and waited. The bus filled and we were glad of the airconditioning. A little over an hour later, having taken in much of the malaysian Countryside, we arrived at Kota Tinggu. We stepped into a ticket office to enquire about the bus to Desaru, and with amazing agility, a woman upon hearing our request, ran full pelt out the office and stopped a bus just as it started to drive away. The Bus to Desaru left once every 2 hours, and we had almost missed it but for this woman.

Climbing abord the rickety bus, we perched on the edge of seats with almost no leg room. Suddenly very conscious of our white skin and western dress in a Muslim country, we tried to be discrete and respectful as we attempted to record our journey on camera.
The bus driver was a character and we seemed to spend almost as much time on the right hand side of the road as the left.
The journey was fun and we were surprised when the bus stopped in a small town. The place certainly looked like a terminus, but there was no ocean in sight.
We were informed a minibus would pick us up to take us to Desaru.
We tumbled off the buss into the heat. Picking up cooled (I wouldn't go so far as to say they were cold) drinks from the shop at the depot.

We were surprised to see muslim girls wearing the head scarf, along with popular tracksuit pants, but most of all, riding around on motorbikes. They smiled at us and one of the local youths came over to me to ask where we were from.
After a while, a car pulled up. Apparently our bus, was a taxi, but disguised as a normal car. Insisting everything was fine, the driver invited us to pile into his car and he would drive us to Desaru for 10 ringgat.
with 4 in the back (myself on someone elses lap) we took a malaysian taxi to Desaru.

To be Continued...

The Alarm Bird

So early one morning last week I was soundly sleeping- until I heard this "Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep". Of course, I woke up thinking I had set my watch alarm to wake my up early for the days classes. I started searching through my room trying to find my watch to turn the alarm off. For a good 5mins I was ruffling through my stuff, baffled that I could not find the alarm to turn it off. It wasn't until I was sufficiently awake that I remembered that I hadn't brought a watch with an alarm to Singapore. So I went back to bed at what I figured to be 4:30am to try to get some more sleep- cursing the person who had left their alarm to go off at 4:30 while they weren't there to turn it off.

It wasn't until I related this story to Jenny that I finally found out that this was actually an alarm Bird. Ok... This is the one thing that has irritated me in Singapore: the Alarm Bird.

"What is the Alarm Bird?" I hear you ask--- Well as the name (made up by me I must add) suggests it is a bird that sounds like an alarm. It doesn't sound like any old alarm; it does not wake you up with the gentle coo of a song bird; it doesn't sound like a clock radio alarm with Sonny and Cher singing I Got You Baby ala Ground Hog Day.

No... This bird sounds like a watch alarm. I don't know how it manages it but it sound exactly like a watch alarm I had when I was 13 years old. Sort of a high pitched beeping sound that doesn't sound like it should come from any natural organic object. Unfortunately I haven't been able to record it to give you a sound bite- but it is very real, and very annoying. Much like the Australian Drop-Bear this bird seems to be constantly making its presence known yet never letting itself be seen.

So every morning for about a week, I was greeted bright and early to the incessant beeping of this bird. I think I am finally use to it and able to ignore it for the sake of an extra 3 hours of shut-eye. But if I ever catch that bird... It won't live to tell the tale

Late Night Post
We have just had a great night out... Me, EmB, Sean, Steven Wei Song (sp?) and Jenny went out to Holland village.... It was a good night- quite a bit expensive but ok.

There was a bit of a white crowd... It was all of us and just a bunch of white people sitting round listening to this Asian girl singing a bunch of white man songs... She was actually quite good-- but she would sing the songs exactly like the original singer would sing it (no interpretation at all) We thought that may be she coolant actually speak English and was just doing an exact copy of what she was hearing on the radio. We requested With or With Out You by U2. She was good enough to take out our request but we dogged her when she wanted audience participation- I think she was asking for us to give her a shout out but it just didn't happen.

Earlier that day
Ok it was really really funny today... We had to go to this photo shoot to be the new faces of International Students of NUS. Now how did this happen? This (extremely short) woman came up to me Sean Kasia and Em B in the Science Canteen asked us "Would you like to come and be in a photo; a photo for the new NUS magazine to represent our UN to overseas students." And then we were like "I don't really know." Only having been at NUS for 2 weeks and knowing that we would be leaving an another 2 weeks we didn't really feel that confident that we were the best cross-section of the international population at NUS.

luckily, Eric was became to be our 'agent' and was going to be our representative at the office of cooperate affairs and he 'liased' with them to organism the photo shoot. Eventually only me Kiera, Phoebe, Em B and Eric were in the photos, all the other couldn't be bothered coming. In the the end the random little woman said that she would send us some electronic copies of the photos and also call us back when she had made a CD-ROM of the pics for us to take home to UNSW. I think there is actually an option later on of having a professional photo shoot done at some later date.

Hopefully we will all look pretty of handsome (although I'm always a great looking guy^_^) and we will all look like shining examples of USNW and NUS exchange students!