Science Without Borders

2005-08-05T23:01:00.000+10:00

This is all of us at Paya. Photo courtesy of Hyok.
Not sure how much more updating in arriere you're going to get from us unfortunately...
I'll try putting some more pics up.

2005-08-01T11:54:00.000+10:00

Well... we are back in Sydney and it is really really cold!
I feel a bit depressed having been back and having to go staight back to Uni. But what can you do. I just thank the gods that I'm not still doing the 6 hours a day the hell-frozen-over room that was my marketing and Chinese Room at NUS.

I feel that I have to add an explaination to this post about the two photos posted by Emi-lou. We had just finished all the assesable work for our trip and were in the need for a bit of a wind-down. Luckly we had some of the greatest TA's in the world and they were willing to show us some of the wild night life in Singapore.

The bar that we ended up at was called CU- as in Cyote Ugly... and yes we are dancing on the bar. I know that I tell everyone that I don't dance- but I thought to myself that it was the last night in Singapore and it was time to let my inhibitions fall to the floor. Little did I know that there was a camera in the hands of one of the dastardly Aussie students ready to pounce on us with a Kodak moment.

Well.. that is about it for me, the details will only be let out of the jar with much drinks and a lot of pursuading. All I can say is that I had fun and I wish I was back!

Last Night in Singapore

2005-07-28T06:16:00.000+10:00

wow, it's been a while now

2005-07-24T21:31:00.000+10:00

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)

Chinese work

2005-07-15T21:43:00.000+10:00

There has been a prolonged period of inactivity on this blog so I thought I'd tell you about some of the work we have been doing. Today the chinese class had an oral assessment. We had to speak on the topic "Wo zui xihuan de ren" which is the person I like the most. We had limited vocab to work with but ill share with you what I wrote. I wont put the english translation, someone who speaks mandarin can do it in the comments or make a new post.
My speech

Ge wei hao
Wo zui xihuan de ren shi wode gege. Ta jiao Adam. Ta bu tai gao ye bu tai ai. Ta hui shuo yi dianr fa wen.
Ta xihuan kan ying wen shu, ke shi bu xihuan kan fa wen shu.
Ta hen hao kan. Ta shi ge hen hao de xue shang. Ta ai he pi jiu ye ai he pu tao jiu. Ta bu hui chang ge. Ta hen ai chuan hao kan ye hao gui de yi fu.
Ren ren dou shuo ta shi ge hao ren. Ke shi wo jue de ta shi xiao wang. Wo zai shi da wang

After the speeches we did some chinese calligraphy where we learnt how to write our names. We are all going to Tioman island on Sunday morning and we need to pack all of our stuff up for 10.30 am tomorrow so I doubt there will be much activity on this website (not that there is anyway. 8 people listed but only 3 posters!!!) until we get back next friday.

A Night Out in Singapore

2005-07-09T15:25:00.000+10:00

After another busy week and a great Indonesian cultural night put on by the Indonesian class (hopefully someone will put up a post soon), quite a large group of us UNSW and SPS students thought it would be a good idea to hit the town and go clubbing. After the usual period of waiting around to decide what the plan was we decided to meet up somewhere in the city because some people needed to do some different things first.
Mike and I decided we would go into the city and play a few games of pool first because we were under the impression the girls would be a while.
To get into the city you can either take a cab or a bus then MRT. We decided to catch the bus because getting a taxi can be a hassle. 40 mins later we were at orchard road in the city. We hadn't' gotten very far into our search for a pool table when we were informed that everyone else was on their way to dbl O in Clarke Quay which is a fair way from orchard road. We had no choice but to try and get a taxi there.
We saw a taxi stand and queued there for 40 mins before we could get a taxi to the club. When we got to the club I was feeling excited. I had left our accommadation at PGP 2hrs ago and was finally going to do something fun for the night. My excitment soon turned to frustration however when we discovered that males had to be over 20 to enter this particular club. Mike was not allowed in so we had to wait a further 1/2 hour before all the others came out of the club.
The group was now quite large, about a dozen people. We then went looking for other night clubs around clarke quay that would admit under 20 year old guys. This prove a futile search as most of the clubs acutally had lower age limits of 23. We tried to figure out why the clubs have this (very annoying) policy. One theory was that the age was set so young men on leave from national service would not come in and cause havoc. The long and the short of it was that we didn't end up finding a club that we could all get into.
It was now 12.40 and we needed to decide what we were going to do before the sun came up. A group of six of us, after much deliberation, finally decided we would go salsa dancing in Chinatown. One of us, Jenny, is a salsa teacher and taught us all the basic moves. Jenny made the mistake of trying to teach us the "hard" way to do a double dome (pronounced doe-may). I don't know why she thought we could do it and it ended up in many collisions between the participants.
After finishing salsa at 3am we came back to PGP where we then decided to head to the same 24hr prata shop that we went to for breakfast on our first day here. After to 1/2 hour walk there we sat down and ate. After a banana and cheese prata and a blueberry ice drink it was finally time to head back home. It was 4.30 when we got back and some people wanted to go the sentosa island at 12 noon the next day. I decided that I needed some shut eye and gave that a miss.
So after many trails and tribulations we did end up having a good time on the night and many thanks to Jenny for introducing us the the world of salsa.

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

2005-07-06T20:17:00.000+10:00

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

2005-07-01T11:37:00.000+10:00

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

2005-07-01T04:03:00.000+10:00

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!

A typical day

2005-06-28T23:42:00.000+10:00

I have a Statistical Physics test tomorrow so I thought this would be a good way to not study. This is just an account of what I did today to give everyone an idea of what uni work we are actually doing.
After waking up at 7.30 and having a shower in one of the smallest cubicles ever (the bathrooms at college back at UNSW are the same size but with half the number of showers and toilets) it was breakfast time. I am still not comfortable with the idea of noodles or wanton soup for breakfast so I just have a 100% Australian breakfast of Weet-Bix and milk.
I thought I would catch the bus to the science faculty early so I could sit down and have a chat over coffee before class started at 9am. There are two air conditioned buses that go around campus; the A1 and A2. Both get you to science but the A1 does it in 5 minutes and the A2 in 15.
As I was walking to the bus stop I saw an A1 was getting ready to depart. I was not going to give into "kiasu" so i didn't bother running and resigned myself to catch the next one. Silly me did get on the next bus but it was an A2 so i didn't end up getting up to science till 8.45 but still had enough time to gulp down a small latte.
First up for the day was our 3hr chinese class. This class is lots of fun because it is challenging to learn a new language. Today we learnt how to say things like "I want to buy those two pens" and "I like this picture but not that one". The lecturer and I had a disagreement over whether "I like some of his paintings" has the same meaning as "I do not like all of his paintings" which it obviously doesn't. We also discovered that we were supposed to have an assessment task tomorrow. But with some lobbying from our newly appointed class rep, Emily Bek, and some class discussion it was moved to Thursday and we got an easier task. When the 3hrs were up it was lunch time.
We normally have lunch down at the science canteen and today was no exception. There are many stores to choose from and today I had fried duck rice.
After lunch it was marketing time. Marketing is taken by a lady called Miss Susan. She is an interesting person and im glad she doesn't stick to the subject much otherwise 3hrs of marketing would be torture, at the moment it is just unpleasant. She does, however, take pity on us and has toned down our assessment tasks because we all have exams. She also invited us to her place on Sunday evening for a BBQ and swim. I hope we get to meet her 3 little monkeys.
Unfortunatley I had to leave marketing early to go back to PGP and study for my exam tomorrow.
3 solid hours of study later (you know i did it :)) it was dinner time. We went to the PGP canteen for dinner because everyone was pretty busy. We normally try to go off campus because the food is better.
I have not done any study since dinner time and it is now 10.30. I tried to get my mind into gear with a trip to the gym at PGP (which is quite good) but didn't succeed.
I better give study one last crack tonight otherwise I'll feel bad. Can't wait until exams are over and to tell everyone how great our trip to Malaysia on the weekend will be.

Sean

2005-06-27T23:34:00.000+10:00

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

2005-06-27T03:12:00.000+10:00

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

2005-06-27T01:01:00.000+10:00

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

Aleph discovers Singapore

2005-06-26T01:52:00.001+10:00

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 ;).

2005-06-22T19:26:00.000+10:00

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

2005-06-21T22:37:00.000+10:00

Ordering our Prata

2005-06-21T22:36:00.000+10:00

Breakfast at the Cheese Prata

Internet is now up and running

2005-06-21T21:56:00.000+10:00

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

2005-06-12T15:28:00.000+10:00

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.